


Perfidious Albion

by Challis2070



Series: In Defense of the Realm [2]
Category: MindCrack RPF
Genre: A LOT of Angst, Angst, Gen, Irish Language, Northern Irish Troubles, The Troubles in Northern Ireland
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-20
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2020-05-15 02:34:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 28,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19286341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Challis2070/pseuds/Challis2070
Summary: Sequel to Family Relations





	1. Chapter One

There are two cuts, the first one goes to the story, the second one goes to any notes or translations that might be needed.  
  
One  
  
Shimmering, scintillating pain blossomed forth from his throat before spreading through his head and torso. The sharp pain did not reach the extremities, however, rather there it was a dull aching, throbbing, making it nigh impossible to move.  
  
Blind eyes stared up at the ceiling, attempting to divine from it why he was not still asleep. There was, however, no answer forth-coming at this time. The pain chased away the thoughts that were trying to cling and explain what he knew, must know, what was happening.  
  
Slowly, ever so slowly, he felt, felt more than heard, the door open. As he pushed himself upright in the bed, noting vaguely that his arms felt like lead, he finally saw that his mother was now sitting at the foot of the bed.  
  
“Ah, Pádraig, mo mhac1, do you need anything?”  
  
“Mamaí!2 I...why? Why do I hurt all the time? I’m not a baby, why...?” He looked up confused for a moment, trying to figure out how he had gotten down to the end of the bed and was now curled up against Lasairfhíona, like he had always done when he was younger.  
  
“I…it is not a childish thing to hurt, you know. Everyone here hurts.” She sighed as he hissed in pain at her touch, it must be bad for him to do that.  
  
“A…tell me things will be okay?”  
  
Lasairfhíona chewed on her lip. How could she tell him that? Things _weren’t_ okay, that was the entire problem!  
  
“Well, we are going to stay with your uncle in a week, and then things should be far calmer, yes.” Calmer at least she hoped. They’d be there over the summer and over 12 July, and she still had no idea what happened in England then. She thought that maybe nothing happened at all, and she could truly wish for that, right?  
  
Pyro blinked up at her, looking like he wanted to debate this concept, but instead started to yawn and slump back over. Exhaustion was starting to kick back in now, thankfully and hopefully without night terrors this time.  
  
“Oh, sleep, sleep!” She cooed at him, gently patting his forehead with her good hand.  
  
“Talk in the…morning…more…sleep.”  
  
With that, he crawled back under the covers and wrapped them around himself as his mother attempted to get him in the general vicinity of the pillows. There was some sort of success, his head at least was near to a pillow this time.  
  
She sighed softly to herself as she gently closed the door behind her. He’d been having more nightmares since he had returned from England, and now, with a week to go before they left, they’d been increasing in frequency again. She thought that she should talk to Tom about this, rather. Tom knew about the nightmares, but never seemed to know what to do about them.  
  
\-----  
  
BTC yawned. He was only now starting to think that perhaps his lieutenant was right and that he shouldn’t have annoyed the kid. If only now because he’d had the same nightmare of the same day for the past three week straight now.  
  
Considering it, his lieutenant was _usually_ right about this kind of thing, that son of a bitch. But that was his own problem, and not ultimately his lieutenant’s fault, even if he _was_ the bluntest man he had ever meet…and he was in the military. That was damned blunt of the man.  
  
There was the consideration of course, that he was confined to base currently for that stunt. And his lieutenant had told him that they needed to talk tomorrow about something concerning this…incident. What was that about? A personal suspicious was that the kid was being sent back to stay with his…what was it, uncle and cousins? Yeah. Them, sent to stay with them for the summer, maybe? Could be. He still didn’t know why the kid had been here in the first place though…and he knew his lieutenant would take a dim view of him trying to ask the kid (or the cousins…) that question. Hmmmm. Wonder if he could find them online. No. He’d get internet access revoked then. Bah.  
  
\-----  
  
Dinnerbone glanced around as he stood at the airport. The place looked…pretty much identical to the last time they’d been there. Though, of course, this time Pyro wasn’t coming alone or with an airline escort, but rather, they’d finally get to meet their uncle and aunt for the first time.  
  
He wasn’t sure if he should be nervous about this or not. Millbee seemed completely calm. Or, possibly, not awake. No, wait, he was still, remarkably, ambulatory. Oh, of course. He was drinking a massive amount of coffee. It might be mocha. Or tea. It was caffeinated, at the very least. An explanation of how he was up and around this early.  
  
Once again, he had to wonder if he was going to end up as the go to person when things invariably went to shit because nobody in this damned extended family unit seemed to want to actually talk to each other and hash things out. It was _incredibly_ frustrating. He honestly thought he might start screaming if people didn’t start talking.  
  
\-----  
  
Baj thought that Tom was looking okay. Now… Las…Lasairfhíona was using a kind of walker to support herself, but Tom _had_ said that her doctor was a bit over zealous when it came to that. His brother was remarkably protective of her, when all was said and done, all on his own, he didn’t need a doctor to tell him to do that, either. Once he ‘latched on’ to someone, they would have one hell of time making him let go.  
  
Looking at his sister-in-law, even while she was ill, he thought he could see what had gotten Tom to take an interest in her in the first place. She really was quite pretty in her own way, and very well self-assured in her movements and appearance. His brother was a sort of introverted person, and his sister-in-law seemed to help pull him out of his shell a bit, at least from what he had seen. He still wasn’t entirely certain that was _good_ though. It wasn’t so much…so it was so much that he worried that his brother might, upon retirement, find himself in very odd company indeed.  
  
They had been worried about Tom when he first joined the army, but it had seemed to help him. Once he had gotten involved with Lassy though, that worry had come back tenfold. Now though, he could see that his brother really did seem happier to be with her. On the other hand, she didn’t seem either happy or sad to be with him, just kind of…contemplative.  
  
\------  
  
Pyro pondered his current options. His da and ma were standing next to him, squabbling over which of them was going to be the one to go greet his uncle and cousins. There was no good reason they couldn’t just do it all at once, of course, but no, da was convinced that the three of them would be too confusing, and ma was trying to explain why he was wrong.  
  
“Well then.” With that, he proceeded to walk over to his uncle and cousins on his own while his parents were still too involved to even notice that he had walked on ahead. He had to shake his head at that, they never noticed him when they got into their fights. Oh, they never really fought in angry or anything, when they got angry they simply left the room before things got that far. But he didn’t really think that this kind of fighting was really all that much better. It made him feel incredibly invisible.  
  
Well, at least Uncle Baj and Dinnerbone and Millbee seemed to notice him now. Dinnerbone seemed actively amused that his cousin had walked out on ahead. Well, he could ask him if he was amused or not when he got on up there, after all.


	2. Chapter Two

“Hello Uncle Baj. Cad é...How are you today?” Pyro winced slightly as he almost slipped into asking how his uncle was doing in Irish and not English. Luckily Baj didn’t seem to notice it, but there was things he had hoped he hadn’t noticed it, but then it turned out he had. In particular, he needed to make damn sure that Baj knew that he had told ma about that nice little Catholic church that he had been to. And that he intended to go back to during this summer.  
  
His uncle smiled back at him. “We’re okay, are your parents going to be along shortly?”  
  
He grimaced for just a moment before he gathered himself to answer. “I don’t actually know. They get a bit er...oblivious...when they get like this. Though one of them will probably notice that I’m not there in about....a minute.” Just as he finished saying that, they all heard Lasairfhíona shout for Pyro. Well, for Pól, but the end result was the same.  
  
“We’re down here, mamaí!” He said, waving towards where his parents were, looking around trying to figure out where he had gotten off to.  
  
With that, his parents ran (or really, walked as fast as his mother was able to) over to where the four of them were standing.  
  
“Ach, Pól! Don’t go scaring us like that! We were trying to decide something!”  
  
Pyro rolled his eyes a bit at that, that was most certainly not what they had been arguing about. Thankfully, she didn’t seem to notice that he had done so. Or was pretending to not notice him. He suddenly wondered if mother’s old colleague was here again. That man had better not be. Course, since ma was with him this time, he could just tell her directly if he saw the man.   
  
\-----  
  
“Le do thoil, mamaí. Don’t be like that, you were arguing.” He grimaced at her, letting her know exactly what he thought of their fighting. Her son had never liked it when they did that, the cold arguing, and she could not blame him at all for it.  
  
She winced at him and mumbled. ”Not in front of your uncle, le do thoil1.” He was right, but now was not the best time. They were house sitting for his uncle’s neighbors, they could talk when they got settled in there, after all.  
  
She turned and beamed at her brother-in-law with her very best ‘charm the Englishman’ smile. There was every certainty that it was not going to fool him one whit, but she could certainly try to be charming and polite to him, he had cared for her son, after all, even if he _was_ English. And her son was half English. She shook her headly slightly to clear her thoughts.  
Speaking of which, he seemed to be almost scrutinizing her as she spoke. She did suppose that she was doing the same back to him, but on an almost subconscious level. Most likely something to do with how long she had done that before, but it was still not the most comfortable of feelings, all told.  
  
“Hello, I’m Lasairfhíona. And you must be my brother-in-law.” She smiled much more gently at her nephews. They were young, barely older than her son, and children were children, even if they were English. Though she was pretty sure that Tom had mentioned that one of them was Welsh, actually. But hadn’t Baj raised both of them? Eh, something to politely ask after at some point later. Much later. They had the entire summer, after all. Niggling thought in the back of her head said to stop analyzing people based on where they were from as she hated it when people did it to her, but it was an uphill fight.  
  
“Ah, yes. I’m Baj, and these are my children Maxell and Nathan.” As he said their names, he indicated Millbee and Dinnerbone in turn. His sons smiled weakly at her, seeming to read the tension in the air.   
  
\-----  
  
Tom sighed softly to himself as they loaded up the car and he watched his wife and son drive off with his brother and nephews. He, on the other hand, had to wait for the lieutenant here to come and bring him back to the base. He was in civilian clothes, but he _had_ been told to wear that, so he hoped that everything was fine there.  
  
“Hey-o, I don’t suppose you’d be Tom Smith, then?”   
  
“Oh, and who would you be, hm?” He raised a slight eye at the man, for while he was certainly a lieutenant, there was no way to be completely certain it was the _right_ lieutenant, after all. Well, actually…now that he looked around, there _was_ waaaay less military here than there was back at the airport in Belfast. Huh. How odd.  
  
“Oh, I’m Lieutenant Murphy, I was sent to pick you up and take you back to base, Smith.”  
  
“Right you are. Well then, lead on.” He grinned slightly at the lieutenant, who only rolled his eyes in response.  
  
“I assume your…wife and…son are safely on their way?” A short question as they walked out with Tom’s bags towards the military lorry that was waiting where the lieutenant had parked it.  
  
“Yes, unless you’ve done something to make them unsafe?” He was only slightly joking at the question. He was pretty sure that Lasairfhíona could get in trouble remarkably quickly, but since there was like…no other military here than the two of them, she was probably not swearing at people just yet.  
  
“Paranoid much, Corporal Smith?” Well, the lieutenant looked only slightly amused at it, instead of annoyed, at least.  
  
“You _do_ know where we just came from, _right_?” He may not like it, but truth be told, it did end up making you act in certain ways.  
  
The lieutenant just sighed at Tom and shook his head.  
  
“Yes, and that’s one of the reasons you were assigned here, so…have ‘fun’ at counseling, then.”  
“Oh ho, I’m being sent for counseling?” No one liked counseling. Never met a single person who liked it, but…honestly, it was never that bad. He didn’t like it, but he didn’t loathe it like many seemed to.  
  
“No shit, of course you are. Seriously man, I’ve only met one other person as of late who was rotated out of .... _there_ ‘recently’ and you sound almost as bad as him.” The lieutenant shook his head heavily at Tom, expressing his displeasure at having to deal with _yet another_ person just fresh from the province.  
  
“Don’t get many through here?” If you spent time in the military, you’d spend time in the province, unless you were supremely blessed. He didn’t see how they could avoid it here.  
  
“Not really. We mostly coordinate for the local region and the continent, not for Northern Ireland.” There was more to it than that, but it was the best explanation to give on short notice.  
  
“Oh well, a nice change of pace, at least. Don’t suppose much happens around here, after all.” He sincerely hoped not a lot happened around here, that was one reason he had agreed to come here.  
  
“Not…really. Well, we do need to talk about that, actually.”  
  
“Erm…” He’d just _left_ there, he didn’t want to start right in on it again, unless it was just about what went on there. The place was actually pretty nice…outside of the violence, which he couldn’t really fault it for.  
  
“About the one other person here who recently came from the province. In basic terms, please for the love of god, if you meet a Sergeant by the name of BTC, just…go somewhere, _anywhere_ else. Just excuse yourself from there and get the hell away from him. I _really_ don’t want to deal with that yet. Maybe later but for the love of all, not now.” The lieutenant looked actively pained that he had to spell this entire thing out. He couldn’t really blame him, they were going to be stuck in this lorry for a while now.  
  
“Uhhhh, if you say so, then…sure.” He had no idea why, but if this lieutenant wanted him to stay away from this sergeant, then he damn well would do so. Well, logic did say that this man was the one he meant had recently come from the same place he just had, but still. They probably hadn’t even served near each other at all.   
  
“Do you want me to call myself something else, or anything?” They used call signs normally, and BTC was clearly the name that this man had chosen. He wondered if he’d need to change his own for the duration.  
  
“Eh. I’d prefer you to _not_ talk to him _period_ , but if you must, just…not something Irish.”  
  
“We…don’t use Irish call signs. That would waaaaaaaay bad…karma.” Perhaps not mention that his current call sign was simply Ledge, as Lasairfhíona said he should call himself “Legendary” since they had met up (the second time) in _London_ Derry2.  
  
“Well then. That’s good.” The lieutenant looked like he didn’t quite trust him, but oh well. He ought to know all good and well why they couldn’t use Irish call signs.  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations, notes, etc
> 
> 1 Le do thoil = please
> 
> 2 The city of Derry (Londonderry) in Northern Ireland. Derry is the Irish name, Londonderry the English. Also known as Stroke City (London/Derry), the Maiden City (its walls were never breached), and the only city where the first six letters are silent (an Irish Nationalist joke). You can also make the joke that it sounds like Legendary instead of Londonderry, which is what they’ve done here.


	3. Chapter Three

BTC grimaced as he stared at the far wall of the bunk. He had just been informed that it was in his best interest to not bother the new group that had just been rotated in, and the only way he could see to do that was to avoid them entirely. Since most of them were currently attempting to inhale as much food as they could, that meant he was hiding in here, trying to figure out how to make a Minecraft replica of Belfast explode properly when using Redstone, and eating a ton of junk food.  
  
Luckily, one of the people he played Minecraft was online, and he seemed to know both the layout of Belfast (Probably grabbed some maps from when he had mentioned wanting to build it in multiplayer) and also on how Redstone would work in this case.  
  
 _bing!_  
  
Oh goody, the instant messenger. This online friend never used audio, only typed, so it had to be him.  
  
 _”Hey man, how’re you?”  
  
“Oh hey Pyro, doing well. Stuck here eating junk food at the moment, tho.”  
  
“Oh? Why?”  
  
“Just got some fresh blood here, been asked to stay away from them.”  
  
“What did you do that they don’t want you to kill newbies over?”  
  
“Nothing. Well, apparently, upset some kid who wasn’t from here, but that was a while ago. Lieutenant didn’t explain past the stay away part.”_  
  
Pyro suddenly went offline, which was unlike him. BTC was mildly concerned and was about to try messaging him again when he finally came back online.  
  
 _”Okay, man, sorry. That…sounded a hell of a lot like something similar to what I’m dealing with, it was a bit freaky, okay.”  
  
“Oh. Sorry man, didn’t mean to freak you out.”_ He wasn’t sure just _how or why_ he’d be freaked out, it wasn’t like Pyro was in the military or from… _”Uh, got a question for you, if you don’t wanna answer, just say so…”  
  
“I might be able to guess.”  
  
“Erm, don’t suppose you have any family in Northern Ireland?”  
  
“…Yeah, that’s not something I want to answer. Take that as you will.”_ With that, Pyro went back offline, leaving a now even more frustrated and upset BTC behind.  
  
“Oh god damn it. Fuck this, I want real food if no one is going to be around to talk to.”  
  
He was pissed, but he should have guessed, he damn well knew they were in the same time zone at the very least, after all. The little voice in the back of his head reminded him that the kid was probably a unionist but even unionists didn’t much like the military presence, so. And that led to the thought of the fact that when even the community that had begged the military to come had stopped liking them, you had to know that something was rotten there. (Then again, he was wrong on that front. It was the Irish nationalists who had called in the army…only to have it blow up in their face) Just what he could even do about that though, he had no idea.  
  
Grumpily, he stalked off towards the chow hall.  
  
\-----  
  
Baj sighed softly. He had the most terrible feeling that this time was going to go about as well as it did when it was only Paul here and not his brother and sister-in-law. At…at least he’d get to see his brother while whatever terribleness happened, right?  
  
“Positive thinking Baj old buddy, gotta think positive man.”  
  
He thought that Maxwell might have overheard him, but he wasn’t sure until he spoke up.  
  
“I don’t think we have to worry about Pyro running wildly off again, Dad, his mom is here this time, you know?” he said, grinning over at Baj.  
  
“Hm. I’m actually more concerned that _she_ might do that against her doctor’s orders, but I mean…”  
  
“That she’s a grown-ass adult?”  
  
“Max….”  
  
“Yeah, yeah, language, language. It’s still true. I don’t think we could prevent her….but Pyro might be able to, if we asked him to. Or he might on his own. He has been real worried about her, after all.”  
  
“Fair enough.” He could talk to his nephew tomorrow about how his sister-in-law was doing. And maybe make sure he was pronouncing her name correctly. While he was pretty sure that she was just going to find his accent entirely amusing, he could at least _try_ to be close to correct with her name. And he damn well intended to try.  
  
\-----  
  
Dinnerbone contemplated the messages waiting for him on the computer. One was from Pyro, complaining about someone they both played Minecraft with on a private server. And one was from the person that Pyro was complaining about, who was, in turn, complaining about Pyro (though he was using Pyro’s gaming handle and not his real name and thankfully neither of them had ever called Pyro as Pyro around anyone in real life.).  
  
“God damn both of you. Dealing with Pyro was bad enough, dealing with that idiot soldier was bad enough, now this.”  
  
He shook his head and messaged both of them back, first telling ‘Bitsy’ (why the hell the man had chosen that name, he did not know, but he had) that he didn’t want to get dragged into what sounded like a personal communication problem with the two of them, and then messaging Pyro and reminding him that he was currently next door and could, you know, walk over and talk to him tomorrow morning. Like really now, we can talk like normal human being and not keep instant messaging each other, damn it.  
  
Contemplating things, he wondered briefly if ‘Bitsy’ happened to know BTC. Their names were hilariously similar and equally as stupid, after all. Okay, he was being a bit mean now, but BTC _had_ upset his cousin and that put him firmly in the ‘bad’ category.  
  
\-----  
  
Pyro stared at his laptop and tried to not scream. Again. Well, he only muffled a yell and punched the bed that last time, but still, mamaí might get worried if he did that again.  
Dinnerbone was right of course, they could talk tomorrow, but still.  
  
If Bitsy knew that soldier, then god damn. If he _was_ that soldier then he was going to just…  
  
“I’m an adult damn it. Or almost one. If it _is_ him, I’ll just…take a break from multiplayer games for a little while. Yeah. That’s the ticket.” He nodded vigorously. That was the best way to deal with this, take a break and unwind and you know, maybe get therapy or something for god’s sake. Mother had said that she had found a therapist willing to at least meet with him while they were here during the summer.  
  
It occurred to him that he might want to wear his gloves tonight, however. He wondered if BTC’s face was going to take the place of the soldiers from three years ago, or not. Oh god, he hoped not. There was a better than zero chance he’d run into the man during this summer (unless God was looking down on them right now and had arranged for the soldier to be transferred, and god he could hope, right?) and he really didn’t want this to become a reoccurring thing. At all.


	4. Chapter Four

Lasairfhíona yawned as she got up to do the stretches she was told to do by her doctor. He had specifically said what to do (and not do) while she was here, and if she wanted to stay out of the hospital again, she’d better get to it.  
  
Pól had sounded like he had been crying in his sleep, but it didn’t sound like he had woken up, so she had let him be. If he had wanted to, he could have called her or come gotten her.   
  
Tom was still on the base, and was, as far as she could tell, living there for the duration, though he was permitted to come visit them, of course. That would be entirely psychotic of England to not let him see them when they were here, of course.  
  
She and her….brother-in-law…had agreed to meet up for lunch today over at his house to discuss what exactly the entire summer would entail. Probably ought to mention about Pól’s birthday party, gotta remember that. And can’t forget to discuss what they intended to do about 12 July, as well. They normally either went to stay with her family (Tom was always on duty that day), or they stayed in the basement of their house. It had worked pretty well thus far, but this house that they were watching didn’t seem to have a basement at all and she was pretty sure that Baj had mentioned his basement being a mess. But hell, in a pinch, it would do, right?  
  
Pól’s birthday was the day after that, which was a bit unfortunate. He rarely got a really nice peaceful birthday, though she damned well tried to make it so every year. Her son professed to not mind it, but…she minded it. She remembered nicer birthdays for herself. She remembered her parents and grandparents talking about it. She wanted him to have it.  
  
\-----  
  
Puttering about, Baj wondered what he should make for lunch. What _do_ you make for lunch with your sister-in-law who you’re meeting for the first time since she married your brother?  
  
Well, since it was entirely up to him (and technically the doctor’s recommendations that he had been faxed), they were going to have soup and salad. Mostly because he had no idea how much either of them were going to necessarily want to eat as they discussed what needed to be discussed.  
  
What vexed him the most was the fact that he knew that the only time she had left Northern Ireland was when she got married, and that was Scotland, not England. He really didn’t want to have to basically play as tourist director to her in addition to Paul, but…hell, it was better than some, as long she was willing to learn, he guessed. He knew her son was fine with that, at least.  
  
He shrugged slightly and went to answer the door, it was just about when she said she’d be over, after all. And Nathan and Max were both off playing with friends (and had dragged Paul along with them, from what they had said as they left).  
  
\-----  
  
“Hello, Lasairfhíona. Are you doing any better today?”  
  
“Why hello Baj. And yes, a little bit. The exercises seem to help.”  
  
“Did…Did I manage your name right, by the way?” He looked at her a bit quizzically and she grinned back at him.  
  
“Quite close enough, all told. It took your brother quite long to get it, it’s quite okay.” Then again, Tom hadn’t exactly been practicing her name so much as trying to avoid panicking about the fact that she was pregnant, really. Maybe Baj here would catch it faster than he had done.  
  
“Really though, if you can’t say it, you can call me Lassy if you’d like.”  
  
“No, no. It’s okay. I’ll keep at it.”  
  
\-----  
  
She stared awkwardly across the table at him as he set down the soup and salad bowls.  
  
“Figured we might want to have something a bit light after you were travelling all day yesterday.” He said with a slight shrug. He never cared much for travelling and couldn’t stomach much food until he was settled, but he had no idea if she was similarly inclined.  
  
“Oh, it’s always a bit hard to eat when travelling, to be sure.” So she _was_ similar at least in that small way. It was a start, right?  
  
“Mhm. So, Paul’s birthday is on the 13th of July, right? Was there anything you wanted to do specifically? Like do you bake a certain cake, or have a big party or anything?”  
  
“Oh no, we don’t have a big party. It would be hard to get people over then. We normally just have a nice cake or pie, he’ll usually ask for something specific in the next few weeks.”  
  
“Hm? Does Paul not like having a party, then?” He hadn’t been around the boy enough to know anything about how he reacted to parties, come to think of it.  
  
“No, it’s just that travelling on the 13th can be a bit of a tricky proposition, even on the rare times that the 12th has been calm. When we’ve stayed at my family’s place, of course they celebrated with us, but otherwise well, we’re normally at the house. Not many people can make it, and we don’t feel like going out to see the conditions, so we stay in the basement and make cakes and stuff.”  
  
What.  
  
“What. Is your kitchen in your _basement_??”  
  
“Eh? No. We have a small camp oven down there and some hot plates. The actual kitchen is right where it ought to be, on the ground floor. Why would we have a kitchen in a basement??”  
  
“I don’t know, that’s why I was asking you. It sounded like you were saying you bake cakes in the basement, and to bake a cake you need a kitchen.”  
  
“But we _do_ bake cakes in the basement, we just don’t have a kitchen there. It’s just the camp stove and hot plates.”  
  
“But if you have a normal kitchen on the ground floor, then why are you baking in the basement?”  
  
“Oh. Because it’s safer there. You know, 12 July isn’t really safe, so we’re normally still down there from the day before for Pól’s birthday the next day.”  
  
“I…see. Okay, I probably don’t really, but I sort of understand. Sort of. Maybe.”  
  
“The 12th day of July is a ‘holiday’ in Northern Ireland. It gets…violent. So we, you know, hide.” She made a vague waving gesture as though Baj should know exactly what she was talking about already and that he was being tiring for not understanding her right away.  
  
“Violent in general or violent specifically against you?”  
  
“Yes. I mean, both.” She shook her head slightly, trying to figure out how to word things.  
  
“I think we might both live in our own bubbles.” Baj replied, solving her need to explain what she had meant.  
  
\-----  
  
“So Pyro, your mum is…an interesting person.” Dinnerbone figured there was _probably_ a better way to say that, but he could not, for the life of him, figure that one out.  
  
“I uh well…I mean…she’s nothing like your da, so I mean, I guess so?” Pyro looked back at Dinnerbone with a fairly confused expression. “I guess I’m trying to say, the last time she left Northern Ireland was when they got married, so that was a while ago.” People always seemed surprised by that information, for some reason. He wasn’t quite sure why.  
  
“I guess that makes sense. It’s still _weird_ though, because I mean, we’re all part of the same country…”  
  
“Uh, um.” How do you tell your cousin that that’s kinda the problem and you kinda want to be a part of a different country?  
  
“Oh wait. That’s kinda debatable, isn’t it?”  
  
“It’s entirely debatable, and that’s the whole of the problem, really. Hey, question.”  
  
“I might have an answer, what is it, Pyro?”  
  
“What happens around here on the 12th of July?”  
  
“Not a hell of a lot. Why, you want to celebrate your birthday early?” Some people did that, of course, when you wanted your birthday to fall on a weekend or what not. Less of an issue with summer birthdays, but still. Couldn’t hurt to ask.  
  
“Oh, no. But if nothing happens on the 12th, then we can probably celebrate more on my birthday!” He smiled happily over at his cousin, pleased with this logic.  
  
“That it what it. You don’t celebrate your birthday normally??” He knew damned well that people in Northern Ireland celebrated birthdays. They had normal birthdays, he had seen this on tv before. He knew it to be true. Pyro, therefor, _must_ celebrate his birthday. This was perfectly valid logic.  
  
“Oh no, mamaí bakes a cake with me, but I mean, you can’t bake very much using a camp stove and hot plates, and that’s all we have in the basement.”  
  
Dinnerbone stared at Pyro for a very very long moment.  
  
“There is so damned much wrong with that statement, Pyro, that I don’t even know where to start in on it.”  
  
\-----  
  
Stretching, he wondered what today would bring. The last few days had been a bit hectic for BTC and he was glad they were finally at a break for him, give him a few days off of work. He’d been given a two day pass (under orders that he’d get it ganked if he didn’t stay on perfect behavior) and he really didn’t want to lose those privileges. He wondered if going to the local supermarket was safe. Probably, hell, if something happened he could just…leave. Leaving was totally and always an option. He _had_ to remember that. 


	5. Chapter Five

Pyro pondered his options. Normally, during the summer, he went to either an arcade, or attempted to wrangle his study habits under control. Both were equally valid options, though he had no idea where an arcade was, and mamaí wanted him to make the most of it and get out of the house instead of studying. “Studying”, however, usually entailed making videos and posting them, not just, you know, traditional studying. He considered it an entirely valid option however, since he wanted to get more into various computer studies, and he wasn’t entirely sure what he wanted to do when he went to university.  
  
He had talked to Dinnerbone the other day about their mutual friend, and all three of them agreed that, perhaps, they should just leave each other alone for the time being, unless they really _needed_ something that only the other one could do. It wasn’t the most ideal solution, but it would certainly work for now. Just gotta find a way to not get so upset in the future, after all.  
  
Mamaí had spoken with him about where the Catholic Church was, and while she was mildly ‘suspicious’ of some of his explanations, she had left it be. She had agreed that the church itself sounded good and that they could both go there this weekend. However, they needed to go over today and see if Baj could drive them, since Lasairfhíona wasn’t really able to walk quite that far yet. She was hoping that she’d be up to it before the end of the summer, though.  
  
He was trying to figure out how upset mamaí might get, which depended entirely on what his uncle might choose to tell her when they mentioned the church and how they kind of needed help getting there. Ádh mór1, he could be so lucky that perhaps his uncle would choose to not mention it until they were getting back from church, or something.  
  
All he could do was wait and see, he supposed. His uncle did claim to remember what it was like to be a teenager, perhaps that would work in his favour now.  
  
\-----  
  
Baj contemplated what Lasairfhíona had told him on the phone. They (she and her son) were coming over because they needed to arrange something for this weekend. He had a niggling suspicion of what it could possibly be, and he wasn’t really sure how to react to it.  
  
Paul had, after all, already been punished for leaving without permission, and if they were asking him to drive them to the church, that was certainly asking for permission ahead of time, so he was doing everything by the book, so to say.   
  
Did he leave things in the past or should he tell Paul’s mother about what her son had done while he was here? There was very very very little chance that he had told her on his own volition what had occurred, after all. He remembered perfectly good and well what it was like to be a teenager, after all. Perhaps, in that case, he should let sleeping dogs, well…sleep, unless something terribly important came up where he _had_ to make sure she knew what he had seen when her son had been here earlier. Yeah, that sounded like the best bet. Besides, if he had really meant to let her know, he could have done so at the time. Yeah. Perhaps leave it to be.  
  
All told, the best thing to do now, however, was to go and answer the door, since he was pretty sure he had heard them walking over from next door.  
  
 _Ding Dong!_  
  
Yup. Right in one.   
  
“One moment!”  
  
He hurried over (avoiding tripping over the carpet as best as he could) and pulled the down open for them, greeting them in turn. He really needed to tack the carpet back down. Yet another task for yet another day.  
  
“Hello Lasairfhíona, Paul. How are you two today?” He smiled at them brightly, it was a really nice day out and he was glad to be able to open the house up a bit. Nice days were…not rare exactly, but rain _was_ a bit more common than he would like. But you can’t get lovely gardens without the rain, so…  
  
“Hello, Baj. We’re doing fine, thanks for asking.” Lasairfhíona smiled at him in respond, glad to have gotten out in the fresh air.  
  
Lasairfhíona and Pyro entered the house and followed Baj to the kitchen, where they all spread out around the table. Baj and Lasairfhíona faced each other with Pyro between them, with his back towards the counter top.  
  
“So, you said you wanted to talk to me about something happening this weekend?” he asking, looking quizzical at Lasairfhíona, even though he was pretty sure what the question was.  
  
“Yes, so. I know there is a Catholic church not far from, but I can’t really walk that far yet, so we were wondering if, if you had time, if you could drive us there and back. Only if you don’t have your own church to be at, at that time, of course.” She thought she remembered Pól saying that Baj didn’t really go to church, but she wasn’t really sure.  
  
Haha, he was _exactly_ right on what they wanted to ask. And Paul looked surprisingly nervous, though he really didn’t need to be. He wasn’t going to open up past mistakes, as long as he didn’t make them again, and since he wasn’t, well.  
  
“Oh, yes sure, I can do that. I know where the church is that you’re talking about, it’s easy enough to get to, though I’ll uh…park on the street after I drop you off.” He shuddered slightly, remember that truly godawful parking lot. And the old ladies. But mostly the parking lot.  
  
“Oh thank you so much. You don’t need to be anywhere then?” She looked she knew what the answer would be, but was asking in order to be polite. He’d take the politeness, at least.  
  
No.  
  
“No. If I wanted to go to church, they have evening services, so I could go then, instead, it’s no big deal.”  
  
Paul looked slightly amused at that, and Baj knew why, Paul knew that Baj didn’t attend any church and that he probably wanted to avoid the (perfectly nice) little old ladies from oh, it was only a month or two ago now, though it seemed like far longer ago.  
  
“Sounds like an excellent plan to me, then. Thank you so much for your help, Baj. I’m hoping that by the end of the summer, I’ll be able to walk that far, particularly since I’ll get a rest once we’re there.”  
  
“Oh, of course. Let me know when you want to see, if you want, I can walk with you then, or we can try seeing if my stupid brother might have off then, of course.” He was never entirely certain about certain things, but whenever he thought of the…two of them…he always wondered if, other than the fact that Paul existed, if they could get an annulment at this point. Probably not, or she might not accept it, but he was never certain. But that was so beyond what he wanted to mention while Paul was there that he shoved the entire thought as far down as he possibly could as fast as he possibly could.  
  
“I was hoping he’d be here some weekends, but he…doesn’t really go to church.” Well, she had never known him to go to church, in any case. But she didn’t really talk to him about her going to church either, she just went. And brought Pól along when he wanted to go.  
  
For the first time, Paul spoke up. “That’s not quite true, mamaí, he _does_ go, but rarely. Something bad usually has to happen to make him want to go.”  
  
“Oh. Does he take you with him?” As she said it, she realized the answer was probably yes, if her son knew where his father’s church was.  
  
“He asks. Sometimes I go, particularly if you’re not there. I don’t like walking to our church by myself and he doesn’t like walking there at all. He finds it…intimidating, I think he said. It’s been a while since I asked, though. I think he’d go for you, anyways.” He shrugged slightly, seemingly unconcerned.  
  
Both Lasairfhíona and Baj blinked him, assimilating this new information about Tom.  
Lasairfhíona was the first to react to it.  
  
“I had no idea. He really doesn’t talk about what goes on when I’m ill, just how you’re doing in school and such.” Which was _incredibly_ frustrating when she wanted to know how her husband was doing as well, not just her son!  
  
Baj nodded at her. “He tells us, I mean, his family that lives here, basically, uh….nothing. I mean, he speaks with our mother more often, but not me. We talk at best once a month, under normal circumstances. Which isn’t saying much, I’m not sure things have been normal since…” at which he abruptly stopped his train of thought.  
  
“Hm? Normal since when?” She grimaced slightly, guessing at what the answer might be.  
  
“Since he joined the army, I guess.” He looked incredibly reticent to continue this line of inquiry, and she didn’t really want to press him farther on it if she didn’t have to do so.  
  
“I…suppose that makes sense. I am…” she was unsure what to say. She wasn’t _sorry_ that he was different, as she had nothing to do with it, really. But she could feel faintly empathetic with them for having their son and brother change from how they had known him, she supposed. “I can ask him to write and call you all more often, maybe.”  
  
“That…that would be nice, thank you.” He was grateful that she hadn’t said she was sorry for them. That would have hurt, and she had had nothing to do with his change, or at least, was not the primary cause of it. He would have changed regardless, they just might have seen him more often, and even then, knowing him, probably still not see him very much.  
  
Paul looked back and forth between them, uncertain if he should say anything right now. He shuffled his feet and tapped slightly on the table to get their attention, pulling both of them around to look more directly at him.  
  
“Um, ah. I didn’t know he didn’t talk to the rest of the family. He’d tell me about how you all were doing, made sure I knew his side of the family and what you all were like…” He knew that da got letters, lots of letters, but he had never seen them. Only the pictures. He wondered if his father was trying to keep the return addresses from him. He had told him once he’d like to send a thank you card back to them for writing, and da had gotten very angry at him for suggesting it. He had started to think that maybe his da hadn’t told them at all about him beyond that he was born. Was he ashamed of him?  
  
“Oh. Yeah, mother sends him letters a lot. Like…I think she keeps Royal Mail afloat with all the letters she sends him. And since we talk to her, she co-ordinates all of the information flow between us, and makes damn sure your father is kept in the flow of it.” He really wasn’t kidding with her keeping Royal Mail afloat. She _loved_ proper mail and loved receiving mail.  
  
“Oh, very cool. That must be where he gets all the pictures from! I had wondered about that. We’d look over them when they come and he’d tell me who everyone is and what was going on.”  
  
“Yup. I’ll let mother know that you like them, if you’d like.” She’d love it. She always pressed them on how they and their families were doing. She particularly loved when they’d write her back. Even calling made her happy, but letters were the absolute best.  
  
“Um, actually, maybe you could give me her address, so I can send her a letter? I never see the letters, he keeps them, so I could never let anyone know that I liked the letters and pictures.”  
  
“Certainly, she’d be glad to get a letter from you.” She was sort of convinced that her stupid son had never told his own son that she existed. They had told her and told her that Paul knew she existed, but they had no idea just how right they were and how happy he was to get letters and pictures from her.  
  
Lasairfhíona smiled at Baj for that. She knew her son could and did easily talk with her family but he had told her before that he was worried that his father’s family hated him. She never knew what to tell him, other than she didn’t think that was true.  
  
“So, ah. We’ll meet back here on Sunday morning, then?” She tried to get the conversation back onto the original topic.  
  
“Oh yes. The service is still at nine in the morning, right?”  
  
Lasairfhíona looked over at her son briefly before answering. “Yes, it should not have changed.”  
“Well then, come over at like, 8:45 and we can leave at 8:50 so you can get in without having to deal with as many people all at once.”  
  
“Sounds good to me.” Lasairfhíona nodded as she started to get up to head back over to the vacation house.  
  
Baj smiled at them as he helped his sister-in-law to the door alongside her son and his nephew. Now that everyone knew what they were doing, he could hope to not get dragged into discussions about how Paul had been when he was here earlier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations, notes, etc
> 
> 1 Good luck


	6. Chapter Six

Tom considered carefully what his lieutenant had said about the other man who had been in the province more recently. From what he could piece together, the man seemed to have been injured in that big protest turned riot last year, that he was entirely certain his son had been at as well. He wasn’t entirely certain what to do with this information. He had never talked to his son about that day. He’d never talked to his son about the time he had been interned, either. He knew he should, but he was, honestly, scared to learn what had happened. He knew it wasn’t his son’s fault though, so he shouldn’t be so scared. But he was.  
  
He _could_ ask the man directly, but their lieutenant had asked them to not interact if they could help it. And that was strange enough as it was. He could, of course, try to ask his son. He _oughta_ to do that, truth be told, but oh man that was so painful. Course, it’s not like he should keep running from that. He really did need to talk to his son (and his wife...) more than he did. But the difficulty there, oh oh man. Not good. But required. He’d do it. He had a day off tomorrow and he was going back to the vacation house very late tonight.  
  
Oh. Uh. Better call Lasairfhíona to let her know that. He wouldn’t put it past her to wake up hearing him come in and for him to realize she was aiming a weapon at the ‘home intruder’. Course, she shouldn’t _have_ any weapons but…it was Lasairfhíona. Of course she did.  
  
Right. Call the wife. Call her before you forget. Do that now.  
  
 _ring ring ring_  
  
“Hello, Lasairfhíona, it’s Tom.” Well, she had caller id on her phone, but it was still nice to identify one’s self, after all.  
  
“I should hope so, it _is_ your number.” She was very snarky, which for some people would upset them, but he liked it about her, really.  
  
“Heh. Right, I have a day off tomorrow.” Get to the point, Tom old buddy. She doesn’t like talking on the phone, you know that.  
  
“Oh, very nice!” Tomorrow was Saturday, it would be nice to let him know their plans for church and future attempts at walking there and everything. They had talked the other night for a few minutes, but she was still easily tired and she hated that feeling.  
  
“Right, but I was going to come to the house late tonight and I uh, I wanted to warn you, you know?” He didn’t want a repeat of the one time he had gotten home early and saw her trying to put away part of a weapons cache, though in this case he’d probably have a weapon pointed at him, rather just seeing them, if he came in late and didn’t let her know. He really really really didn’t want to know if what she had told him then was true or not. He really hoped that she was….no longer active…he didn’t think she could really be particularly active now, what with being so ill lately, but…  
  
“Oh. Yea, thanks for letting me know. We uh, we don’t want to be surprised.” Surprises are bad. The last time he had surprised her she had needed to explain why she had a weapons cache in the house with her, at the time, toddler son nearby.  
  
“Yea yea, no not at all. No surprises. Surprises are not good.” Very not good. He was still sore for learning that she had kept a weapons cache at the house when Paul was a toddler. When he had asked, she had admitted that she was afraid he was going to walk out on them and she wanted to protect herself. He was sympathetic to that, but still. Not good.  
  
He nodded even though she couldn’t see him. No surprises. Do not surprise the wife. Surprising the wife was always a terrible terrible idea.  
  
“So uh, let Paul know that I’ll be there when he gets up tomorrow, if you would, please?” He also didn’t want to surprise his son too much, but that wasn’t for the same reasons at all. His son was highly unlikely to react by aiming a gun at….he was fairly certain his son wouldn’t react that way. Pretty sure. Probably…  
  
“Oh, of course. I’ll see you then, love you!” She would have made kissy sounds at the phone but she knew he’d hang up as soon as she said that she loved him as that was their routine.  
  
\-----  
  
Pyro yawned as he got ready for bed. He knew that when he woke up tomorrow, his Da would be here and they were planning on going out and having lunch some place in town. It would be a nice change of pace. Mamaí had mentioned that perhaps they could talk at breakfast about where they wanted to go, and that also sounded nice. Sometimes it was nice for things to be calm, but he really really really wasn’t sure how long he could take it without having some kind of mental break, just expecting bad things to happen at any moment.  
  
The expectation that something was to happen was always there. He was faintly aware that it was _less_ likely to occur here, but he just couldn’t shake the feeling and he wasn’t even sure he should try to shake it. It had damned well kept him safe before, and he was only here for the summer. Might as well just go with the flow. And maybe watch the news from home more, since things were certainly still occurring there. At least then he’d know what terrible things were occurring, after all.  
  
Mamaí had also mentioned that she had found a therapist for him (actually, she had said both of them, but he wasn’t really sure why she wanted to see one here) who was willing to at least help him get started over the summer with some coping skills and such. Oh well. He’d at least try and see if the therapist helped him at all. Probably wouldn’t hurt at least. Well uh, it wouldn’t be pleasant to talk about that sort of shit, but you know, therapists usually don’t attack you.   
  
Well, he didn’t think that therapists would attack you. Probably not. They were trained and paid to help you get better, right?  
  
Right? Right. Mhm. Sleep. Sleep was a thing he needed to do.  
  
He mumbled to himself as he got changed and ready for bed, grabbing a pair of mittens as he did so. It wouldn’t hurt to be on the safe side, of course. For a brief moment, he wondered if da had ever heard him having the nightmares. If he did, he never said anything about them. He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not, truly. Da appeared to exist in a sort of world in which if he didn’t talk about things, they couldn’t hurt the family and…Pyro had learned from an early age just how unfortunately not true that idea was.  
  
\-----  
  
BTC contemplated his desk with all the intensity he could muster. He had, after long last, made an appointment with the counselor to talk about his…issues. Maybe, just maybe, they’d help him and then he could…get on with his life. Or at least, have it stop effecting so totally.  
  
Had to stop thinking about it being a failure to ask for help. He could ask for help in the field, and help others. Why couldn’t he seem to ask for help with this? That’s what they went to school for, trained for. They were there to help him, and in this case, to help him get back on track so the army didn’t lose another soldier. And he should make use of their help. That’s why they were there. Let them do their job, and help. Yea. Need to let them help you, that’s what they are there for. Gotta remember, they are not evil, they are not trying to hurt you. They want you at a hundred percent so you can do your job and be effective. That’s why they existed. You can’t do this all by yourself, and aren’t meant to. Asking for help isn’t weakness, it shows you know yourself and know when to get support. That’s all, that’s all it means.  
  
This did _not_ make him weak. This made him…clever? Or smart. Intelligent. Knowing one’s own weaknesses was smart, and getting help to overcome them was even smarter. It was an ongoing process, of course, but hell, he’d spent so long so damaged that he damned well knew this was not going to be an overnight thing, or even a short time period thing. It would, in all due likelihood, take years. But he could do it. He could do this. He knew he could do this.  
  
He was not the only person who needed help. So, he couldn’t a failure entirely if other people also recognized that they needed help, right? Right. They were all in this together, even if their fights were all on their own (with the help of the counselors, but still). Knowing that other people had fought these battles…it actually kind of helped to know that. It made him feel like it was something he could do and survive. He could get through this, they came out the other side, so could he. And so could others in the future. He could…he could be a good role model for getting help, maybe.   
  
That would be kind of almost nice.


	7. Chapter Seven

Pyro whistled to himself as he set the table for breakfast. He wanted to do a proper fry up (and had checked that the place had the stuff to do that), so he had set his alarm to make sure he’d be up in time to do it properly but without having to rush to get it done before the morning news.  
  
It was mildly odd to be living in someone else’s house when they weren’t there, but he and mamaí had stayed at her family’s house before when the family hadn’t been there, so he decided this would be something fairly similar, though they didn’t actually know the people. They did meet them, the first day they were here. They came just as they were leaving, so that worked out pretty nicely. That family was very nice. They took the fact that mamaí was using a walker very well and let her know there was a slight step-up into the kitchen but that they thought she’d be okay with it.  
  
He blinked slowly as he watched things frying, putting the parts that were done into the warmed oven to keep them until it was all done at the same time. He’d already gotten syrup and such out and ready on the table, and he managed to get the coffee pot to start working, though he personally didn’t much care for the stuff. They’d bought orange juice, so he’d pulled that out as well. Probably everything was good.  
  
“Dia duit ar mhaidin, mic.”1 Lasairfhíona blinked at him as he abrupted whipped around to see her standing in the doorway to the kitchen.  
  
“Oh! Dia is muire duit, mamaí.”2 Despite the slight distraction, he managed to not burn the eggs entirely. “Ah, good! They didn’t burn.” He didn’t like them when they burned, or really even when they got terribly dark. They tasted better when still slightly runny, after all.  
  
“Oh, I didn’t mean to distract you.” She shrugged slightly at him in apology and moved slowly over to the table, pulled out a chair at the end, and sat herself down, since it seemed her son wanted to make breakfast on his own. She hated using the walker, but she’d make an exception today, so that she wouldn’t be quite as slow, but for now, in the house, she’d use a cane instead.  
  
“It’s okay, I figured you’d be awake around now, anyways. That’s why I started breakfast when I did!” He grinned at her as he shoved eggs onto a platter. It was nice to be able to cook for other people, sometimes. He preferred to make his own food, but cooking for people who appreciated it, that was also very nice.  
  
“Heya Lasairfhíona, Paul.” Tom said as he stepped in and looked at the table where Lasairfhíona was already sitting. “Oh. Are you making breakfast for all three of us Paul, or did you want me to help somehow?” By help he meant more, do you want me to clean up afterwards, but he could do that anyways, he reckoned.  
  
“Oh oh no, it’s okay Da. I’ve got it under control.” Mostly under control. “Erk erk erk, stop over heating damn it.”  
  
“Is the stove being fussy?” Presumably, as Paul didn’t normally make unhappy sounds at a stove unless it was being ornery. He would have made breakfast for all of them if he had been awake earlier, but he and Lasairfhíona had been…talking…and so had slept later than usual.  
  
“Yea, it’s nothing at all like the one at home, this one is an electric induction stove.” He grumbled as he pulled the pan off the stovetop again and poked at the dials and knobs in an effort to make it stop burning everything. “It likes to run hotter than I’m used to, whups.” He shuffled the food off the pan and onto a plate, before turning off the stove entirely. “On the plus side, breakfast is done now, in any case.”  
  
He gathered up the eggs and sausages and everything else and brought it all over to the table before grabbing the coffee carafe and bringing it to the table as well. He sat down similar to how he had the other day over at his uncle’s house, with his back to the cabinets, with one parent on each end of the table.  
  
“I thought it might be nice to have a nice fry up when all of us were together.” He waved his hands around the table, trying to indicate at the food without knocking any glasses over in the process.  
  
“Oh, thank you, Pól.” She smiled at her son while her husband helped dish out the food to everyone. They rarely got the chance to all eat together, regardless of what meal it was, and today, they’d be getting, hopefully, all three meals together!  
  
“Yes, thank you, Paul.”  
  
They all sat around the table, quietly thinking to themselves for a while before anyone spoke up.  
  
“So, uh. Da, how has erm…work…been?” He wasn’t entirely certain what to say, they were rarely all at the table together any more. He did like knowing how his parents were doing in return, since they always wanted to know how he was doing in school and such.  
  
“Uhhhh…it’s been…fine.” While he and Paul _would_ sometimes talk about work, he, on general principal, didn’t talk about it with his wife. Neither of them really wanted to get into it that often. But he _was_ told to try to be more open with them, so… “Apparently the base doesn’t get many people who were assigned to Northern Ireland. I think most people start there and then go over, but they don’t get assigned back there. There is one person who was there recently, but the lieutenant has asked us to uh, leave each other alone. Not sure why, really.”  
  
Pyro looked slightly uncomfortable at the news. “Ah say, your lieutenant didn’t mention what this other solider er…called himself, did he?”  
  
“Um, yes, he did. I think he was calling himself as Sergeant BTC, why?”  
  
Pyro groaned slightly and dropped his head against the table before sitting upright. “Do you want the long answer or the short answer?”  
  
“Any answer, really.” Please have an answer this time.  
  
“I met him when I was here like the month and a half ago that was. We had um….we had met before.”  
  
“Before? Before where? At home?” Oh god please don’t have let him been one of the people from three years ago.  
  
“Yeaaaaa, at home. Not at the house, hummmm, there was a protest.”  
  
“Did he hurt you?” If this soldier had made his son upset, then it was likely…  
  
“No, no. Um, someone else hurt him. Um, not sure what it was, but there was a lot of fire. I um, there were sandbags, so, I threw one open and on him. Apparently, he had been trying to find me since then. I wish he hadn’t. It was a shit protest, I got injured as well, I mean, and it was just completely shit.” He grimaced slightly at his rambling. He also wasn’t quite sure why they automatically assumed that the soldier had attacked him when they had met at home. He hadn’t said he had.  
  
“Oh, uh, this was the protest where your aunt Saoirse found you and took you to the clinic and you were…really out of it?” Understatement of the year, Tom, understatement of the bloody year.  
  
“She didn’t find me. I found her. Her place wasn’t far from the protest site. I stumbled over there, and knocked on the door. I remember her opening the door and her shoving me in the car, but not much after that. I remember more of what happened prior to that, actually.”  
  
“So um, what exactly happened? I only have our own reports to go on…” Which he had kind of basically stolen from the lieutenant.  
  
“And I only know what you told me and what the news reported, which was kind of terrible…” She swore she was always the last to know _anything_ around here.  
  
“That was…basically it. It started out a completely normal and peaceful protest. Some kind of godawful sound came from behind where the police and army was, and then all hell broke loose. Someone threw something at said soldier, I saw him, I threw the bag of sand over him and it pushed him back towards some other soldiers. I remember getting hit with _something_ , twice, and I made my way to auntie Saoirse’s house.”  
  
“What…were you hit with?”  
  
“Didn’t…didn’t the doctors tell you?”  
  
“No, they said you were injured, and that you’d recover, but not specifically what happened. Just that they might not report this because they were concerned for your privacy…oh. You were shot, baby, weren’t you??” Lasairfhíona paled considerably at this realization. So much had happened to her baby and she had never known. And there was that time before then, when he was twelve, oh lord. So much stuff she had no idea of.  
  
“Auh, yes. The doctor said, from what I remember, that one shot was a rubber bullet and caused hideous bruising and bleeding where it broke the skin, and the other was a normal bullet which was lucky to not hit anything terribly important but was the reason I barely remembered what happened after I got to auntie’s place. She said that was because the adrenaline had worn off and that it was good that I had gotten to my auntie’s place when I had.”  
  
“Oh holy shit.” Command had lied about what ammo had been there, then. They claimed that if anyone had been shot with live rounds, at _any_ protest, that it was _clearly_ the work of the IRA or related ‘scum’, and that was….probably not the case, since there was no evidence of IRA involvement at that protest. Or very many protests at all. He personally thought that the IRA sat back and videoed the violence for propaganda use rather than start it themselves. They had more than enough to work with without having to kick it out themselves, after all. That would explain why the doctor didn’t want to report it, the army would have tried to destroy all evidence of misdoing on their part. Shit. Destroying evidence in this case would have included…shit.  
  
“Is something erm…more wrong, da?” Beyond the obvious.   
  
“There shouldn’t have been any live ammunition there…”  
  
“It was a protest, there shouldn’t have been, I know. But the doctor said it was most likely from an army gun, she said she had seen them before?” He had been terribly confused when the doctor had said that. He thought all guns were basically the same.  
  
“Yea, it’s a different round, though of course people do try to recreate it to um, cast suspicion, and so on. Though that’s waaaaay less common that command would have you believe.” Probably close to non-existent, but it wasn’t impossible that someone might try. Or you know, just let the army shoot people themselves. Damn it all. He was entirely sure he had never shot anyone…though that might only be because he was primarily a mechanic.  
  
“Right. Um. Look, I just want to finish breakfast and _not_ think about things I can’t change.” Better to leave the past in the past.  
  
“We really do need to talk more, I do think, but…yeah. A bit much for now.”  
  
\-----  
  
“Hello, BTC. How are you doing today?” The counsellor waved him into the room and indicated which chair he should sit in.  
  
“About as well as can be expected when you have to see a counsellor, I guess.” He knew that the counsellor wasn’t evil or anything, but it damned well felt that way, sometimes.  
  
“We aren’t some kind of boogeyman, BTC.” His patients rarely believed him.  
  
“For most of us, you might as well be.” He just couldn’t shake that feeling.  
  
“BTC. You _are_ aware that we’re _also_ soldiers, right? Not just counselors or therapists. We had to go through the same training you did.” He sighed slightly and rubbed his temple with his left hand.  
  
“Hm. I thought most of you were civilian contractors?” Not that he thought about it very much, just what other people had talked about the counsellors being.  
  
“No actually, mostly conscientious objectors.” Most people didn’t ask, but well.  
  
“Oh.” He had never thought to ask one of them. It made sense though, he knew the army didn’t let you get out of it just because you objected. Maybe it should. Or maybe, you know, not get stuck in some stupid decades long sort of war like thing.  
  
“Course, the other option is medic. Many of us do that as well. Some help as you’re injured, some like myself, help after you get injured.” He had been a medic before, as well, but that was neither here nor there.  
  
“I had no idea.” He was starting to think he should ask more questions, sometimes he might even get answers.  
  
“Most people don’t ask.”  
  
“Oh. That’s not very nice, I guess.” Trying, trying very hard to be polite and consider what other people might feel about something.  
  
“It’s okay. And besides, we all need to practice empathy, it’s kind of…beaten out of one while in the military.” Well, military usually thought it got in the way. Which was a terrible way to view the world, really.  
  
“I guess so. Not sure how I can practice being empathetic while also trying to not be an uh, cunt, and getting privileges revoked…” He had managed going out to the supermarket, but well, it could have gone better. He hadn’t gotten anything revoked, but instead, they moved the appointment time for this up a bit.  
  
“Carefully and slowly, carefully and very slowly.” And more frequent visits at least to start with, but he’d realize that sometime later, probably.  
  
“And um…” Did he mean he was going to get homework or something? He had no idea how counselling really worked.  
  
“Basically, you’d get homework.” Meditation techniques, orders to go deal with larger groups of people, etc. And discussions on what to do if he ran across people he has had difficulty dealing with in the past.  
  
“Oh. Well then. I can probably work with that.” Most certainly could, of course he could deal with it. There wasn’t really any other option, after all. Had to learn to deal with this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations, notes, etc
> 
> 1 Good morning, son.
> 
> 2 Hello, Mother (first part is said in response to someone saying Dia duit to you)


	8. Chapter Eight

Pyro sighed. They had gone out to lunch, and while that had went entirely fine, they were now back at the house and planning what they wanted to make for dinner.  
  
This, of course, meant they were probably going to try to talk more. Talking more was terrible. Entirely and utterly terrible in every way. Why yes, he was being overly dramatic, but he was a not quite 15 year old boy, he could be melodramatic if he wanted to be, so he could. It wasn’t like it would be unusual, after all. All teenagers were melodramtic, even when they recognized they were being so.  
  
Talking, talking was loathsome. While he could objectively realize that it was a good thing, that didn’t mean he had to like it. At all. And he didn’t. He didn’t like going over what had happened in the past. It was frustrating, hurt, didn’t change anything, and made him upset, generally. And usually in that order.  
  
Of course, they had a right to know things, but then that just made him wonder why they didn’t ask at the time. He knew the reasons, of course. There wasn’t always time when things happened, and sometimes, when too much times passes, you just don’t want to unearth things. Like now. He didn’t want to get into a discussion of that protest, or, god forbid, the time he had been interned when he was twelve. That…oh man though, that would be far far worse to talk about. He assumed his father knew what had happened then, but maybe only that he had been held there? Had they even told him when he had been brought in? He wasn’t sure anymore!  
  
It seemed to him that his parents barely talked at all to each other. Oh. No. He heard them talking at night, but he didn’t think that was the same kind of talking. Or at least, not a useful kind of communication in this case. Grimacing, he shoved that thought out of his head. He really didn’t want to think about his parents that way, even though (or maybe particularly because) he knew how he was made. He still thought it was a bad idea on his father’s part.   
  
Self-loathing was not, all told, a good feeling. You can’t change how you were made. You just have to live with it. If she had not wanted you, she could have done something for it. If she had not wanted da to be around, she, likewise, could have done something for it. If da hadn’t wanted to be around, he could have done something for it. Something could have been done. But they wanted him, and so, they had him and kept and stayed with each other for, what he could tell, was his sake. There was the surprise that he had no siblings, however. He knew mother had wanted more children than just one…  
  
Also a thought he didn’t want. What was it about today that was bringing all these terrible images to mind? Oh right. Thinking about the past tends to do that, indeed.  
  
“Pól, please go get washed up before dinner.” Lasairfhíona hobbled into the living room where Pyro had been reading some comic books. She wiped her free hand on her apron before leaning against the door frame.  
  
“Oh. Do you want me to help with dinner?” He closed his book and started to stand up.  
“Not tonight, thanks. I think you might have time to take a shower, even.” She smiled at him softly.  
  
“Okay mamaí, I’ll go do that.” He sighed softly and headed off to the bathroom to get neatened up before dinner. If she suggested taking a shower, he probably oughta, if only so she didn’t try to poke his hair again. His hair wasn’t _that_ bad, was it? Oh. Yes, yes it was. It really really was.  
  
\-----  
  
Lasairfhíona wasn’t looking terribly forward to dinner. She and Tom had been talking all afternoon, and now they’d be talking with Pól as well. She didn’t like discussing things one couldn’t change. What good could it do? Well, perhaps, you could avoid doing the same things in the future. That was the only real benefit that she could see to it.  
  
“Tom, honey, Pól has gone to take a shower before dinner.” She shrugged as she helped set out the table as he worked on making dinner.  
  
“Because you asked him to?” He might have gone for a shower on his own, but remembering back to when he was fourteen…probably not so much. Only when it became uncomfortable to not shower.  
  
“Well, yea. Teenage boys never seem to know when to get clean.” Given her experiences with her brothers, at least, that was true. She had avoided learning how her old…colleagues…had dealt with showering. Or not showering.   
  
“No, I guess not. Do teenage girls know any better?” He doubted it.   
  
“…No, not really. But we don’t have a teenage girl. Then at least I could teach someone about makeup and explain why all clothes should have pockets and why our clothes are made by evil people who hate women and don’t want them to have pockets.” She waved her hand slightly as she sat down and sighed, thinking about having had another child.  
  
“I…I didn’t think you wanted another child?” She had told him before that it was a bad idea. He had almost, when she was pregnant, offered to take her to England, but he had only started the sentence when she had glared at him with a deathly look. Her response was that she had wanted a baby, and even though it wasn’t ideal, it was probably the best she was going to get.  
  
“It’s a bit late now. And medically, that’s a pretty bad idea. But I can still wish.” Oh lord how she could wish. If only she had gotten pregnant again right after he’d been born. But…that had been a miscarriage, she was pretty damn sure of it. She could have seen a doctor, but had not wanted to, not to leave Pól home with her family at the time.  
  
“I do suppose so. I am sorry about that.” He was. He was sorry about a lot of things, but he never wanted to hurt her. He shouldn’t have gotten involved with her in the first place, but you can’t change the past. So.  
  
“No you aren’t, but that’s okay.” She was never sure how much of the truth he was telling. How could he have gotten with her in the first place? He wasn’t _stupid_ , he was really quite bright. But maybe naïve. Or he just didn’t care too much about it. She wasn’t sure if that was better or worse.  
  
“No, I mean, I wouldn’t have liked it so much, but I don’t want to hurt you, after all.”  
  
“I suppose I can accept that argument.”  
  
\-----  
  
“Paul, dinner will be ready in a few minutes!” He shouted in the general direction of the room the Paul was in.  
  
“Okay da, I’m almost ready!” Pyro shouted back from the bathroom.   
  
He shoved aside the thoughts he was thinking and finished getting dried off before getting into some clean clothes. His mother had packed waaaaaay more clothes than they needed he thought, they had a washer and dryer here, of course.  
  
Mumbling to himself as he got changed, he combed his hair and hurried off to the dining room.  
“Hello da, hello mamaí. How are both of you?”  
  
“About the same as before you took your shower.”  
  
“I….sure, but things could have changed. I wasn’t sure. I know you were talking.”  
  
“Oh. You really shouldn’t worry so much.”  
  
“I don’t think that’s possible, but I’ll try to keep that in mind.”  
  
“We’ve got chicken and rice for dinner. Well, a chicken and rice and mushroom thing that was baked in the oven.”  
  
“Smelled nice.” He was terribly reticent to speak before they started well…grilling him. He was sure they were going to do so.  
  
“Go on and sit down, your mother has already laid out the table.”   
  
He shrugged slightly and entered the dining room proper and went to sit where he had before.  
  
“I’ll sit where I did before, okay?” He nodded towards them as he went and did what he said.  
  
“Certainly. Sounds good to me.”  
  
Lasairfhíona nodded at him as he came over and sat down and joined her at the table.  
  
“Thank you for making dinner, da.”


	9. Chapter Nine

Baj pondered the last week thoughtfully. If what Nathan was telling him was true, his nephew had, apparently, never had a birthday party. Well, they thought he might have had one or two, but he thought at this point it might be better to simply ask directly on the matter. It seemed to get a better end result from Paul.  
  
Well, his nephew had said he was coming over today to spend some time with Nathan, so, he could kill two birds with one stone, pretty much.  
  
\-----  
  
“Hey, mamaí?” Pyro leaned his head into the living room before wandering over and flopping on the couch that was opposite of the chair that his mother was sitting in.  
  
“What is it, Pól?” She looked up from her knitting to listen to what he had to say. She liked it, even if it did net her the nickname of Madame DeFarage. 1  
  
“There’s a demonstration happening in Manchester for freedom for Northern Ireland. Maybe we could go to it?” He grinned at her, waving the info sheet he had printed out. His mother always did like reading them, so he thought he’d preempt the question and bring it in with him.  
  
“Oh! When is it?” A quizzical look and she held her hand out for the paper he was holding.  
  
“It’s the Sunday after next, at noon. Meet up is at Heaton Park, and we’d be marching to city hall. There looks to be lots of people planning on going, and we could make signs and such.” He got up and ambled over to her, handing her the print out, before going back over to the couch as he was before. It would be two days before his birthday, or that is to say, on the 11th of July.  
  
“Oh, that would work, it would be after church if we go at nine, indeed. I think that would be quite nice, Pól.” A short nod as she looked over the paper. It looked pretty straight forward to her. Whenever she had felt well enough, she went to demonstrations, right enough, and it would be nice to be able to continue to do that, even when in England.  
  
“Excellent! Er…will you need your walker, then?” he frowned slightly, having only just thought of that issue at all. His mother was…he never really thought of her as being incapable of something, so it was awkward to remember that maybe she _couldn’t_ do something.  
  
“I’ll take it, the cane, and the braces. Between those three, we should be really sturdy.” The doctor had suggested that if she wanted to be damn sure of not falling, to use all three. He had also said it was overkill, but overkill never hurt anyone. Well okay, this kind of overkill had never hurt anyone.  
  
“Okay then! I’ll put it on our calendar on the table.” They had brought with them a small triangle shaped calendar to put on a table or counter with them, so they’d have some place to collect dates and times of anything they’d want to do so that the other two would know where they were.  
  
“It’s a bit unfortunate that your father will be working that day, but maybe he shouldn’t be going to such demonstrations anyway…” She rarely any more tried to get him to go to such things. He tended to refuse, not from principal, but from the fact that it might give his lieutenant a heart attack and he actually liked the man. He wasn’t the _worst_ lieutenant she had ever met, but she still didn’t much care for him. Giving him a heart attack might be a bit too cruel though, so she never pushed the issue much.  
  
“It’s still a bit sad that he can’t join us, indeed.” He wished his father could come some time, but understood why he could not. Still, it would be a unique sight…  
  
“True. Didn’t you say you were going to go talk to your cousin Nathan soon?” She made a shooing motion at her son, reminding him of what he had almost forgotten, before she picked her knitting back up.  
  
“OH RIGHT. Yes, um, be back later, ma.” He flung himself up off the couch (much to his mother’s chagrin) and hurried out the door.  
  
\-----  
  
“Heya Dinnerbone!” Chipper he entered his cousin’s house.  
  
“Hey Pyro! How are you and your mom?” Dinnerbone looked up from where he was staring at his phone as he sat cross-legged on the floor of the living room. It was still a bit startling to have Pyro suddenly appear, but at least he had knocked this time before barreling into the house.  
  
“Pretty good, actually. We were talking about things we could go out and do this coming week.” He made wild waving motions with his hands as he bounced around to see what Dinnerbone was looking at.  
  
“Nice! Look, uh, Pyro, um, my dad wanted to ask you about your plans for your birthday.” Da had asked him to send Pyro into the kitchen, actually, when he came over, so he could ask. He could, or they could talk for a few first. It wasn’t a terribly important decision, after all.  
  
“Oh? Oh right, he does normally send me a nice card on my birthday.” A brief moment as he thought of the cards that had been sent. They were nice cards, if a bit too….cutesy…for his taste, generally. Well, the cards from his father’s sister were cutesy. The ones from uncle Baj were actually pretty decent.  
  
“He...does?” Well, of course he did…they got birthday cards from uncle Tom, at least they usually did, though they sometimes came a month or more late.  
  
“Yea. Well, I mean, he sends it to his mother and she sends me collected birthday cards each year, but it works out the same.” He made a faint waving off gesture with his hand, appearing to dismiss the issue entirely.  
  
“Grandmother sends you cards?” Grandmother sent them cards. Grandmother loved sending and receiving mail. This should not be as surprising as it was. Then again, grandmother never seemed to like the concept of Northern Ireland, so he had kind of…assumed…that it had extended to say, her daughter-in-law and grandson…  
  
“Yea, only on my birthday. She sends da _a lot_ of cards though, like at least one a week.”  
  
“She doesn’t send you them?” Which was odd, but if she didn’t like Northern Ireland, and her son was ‘normal’ but her grandson wasn’t ‘normal’ (ie, English) then perhaps that made sense? As much sense as such things make, really.  
  
“Naw, she sends them to da, but da reads some of them to me, so. It seems like she expects him to do that, so that’s fine.”  
  
“Ooo…kay then. Um, Dad said he was in the kitchen, so, uh. Right.”  
  
“Okay. I mean, my birthday ain’t that important, but…sure.” He rolled his eyes and headed into the kitchen.  
  
\-----  
  
“Hello Paul.” He waved his nephew on over to the table where he was sitting, playing with a cup of tea.  
  
“Heya Uncle Baj, I heard you wanted to ask me about my birthday?” He still didn’t know why they seemed to care so much about it. Sure, he was turning fifteen, and that was a nice birthday, but it wasn’t like…earth-shattering, or anything.  
  
“Yes, I heard that you haven’t had any birthday parties??” Probably no birthday parties. He totally could have had some, but they might not have been very good. Getting news second hand was never a good thing.  
  
“Oh. I’ve had two, actually. When I was five, da was on base in Canada and ma was at Armagh, so I stayed with my auntie Saoirse…and they had a little party for me. Their basement is waaaaaay better stocked than ours was, um is? And they had a stove. So we had a cake and a bit of a party.” He giggled remembering that party. It was fun, they had glazed the cake in orange, white, and green whipped cream frosting. He had even gotten to help color the frosting for that!  
  
“…Right. And the other time?” He was developing a mild headache at the thought of what he was going to hear after that first one.  
  
“Oh! It was when I was ten, and before they made it entirely illegal for us, um, the half-caste kids, I mean, to be on base. Ma was in the hospital then, so da took me to the base for that weekend, for safety, and his colleagues made a nice cake and put up streamers and stuff! He was really angry at them though, I’m not sure why. I think he had wanted them to leave me alone.”  
  
Baj stared at his nephew for a very very long moment. No kidding, Paul, he thought, of course your father wasn’t happy. He’s gone to pains to avoid letting any of the….’squadies’ near you!  
  
“Yeah. Okay. No. Those aren’t really sufficient as birthday parties. Since it would be _really weird_ to have a birthday party in the house you are kind of…’housesitting’, we’ll have one here. Let your mom and dad know that I’m planning that so they can, you know, do what they want as well.” So that Lasairfhíona could complain at him, most likely, but you know, if her birthday was in the summer he’d have thrown her a birthday party as well. Huh. Maybe he could explain that to her and it might help.  
  
“Huh. Okay, I’ll tell mamaí and she’ll tell da for me. I still don’t see the point, we spend the night before in the basement, so, you know, do you mean for us to spend the night before over here?” Well, to spend that day before and his birthday in the basement, which was normal. Save for the year he had been on base. But he was pretty sure he was still in a basement that time, actually. It was surprisingly hard to tell up from down and they had brought him to the decorated room blindfolded for the surprise and….yea…that would have upset da, yes it would have indeed.  
  
“….Paul, there aren’t riots here on the 12th. You don’t have to spend the night in the bloody basement!” Sometimes he wondered if Paul was being intentionally obtuse or if he really had simply never considered the possibility of a lack of riots. He wasn’t sure which of those options was worse.  
  
“Really? I’ll have to ask mamaí about it. I don’t think it would be safe…” He wasn’t trying to be whiny, he was just really really nervous about the entire idea. How could a place truly not have riots? At all?  
  
“…Okay. Let me know tomorrow what she has to say about it, and what your dad has to say about it…unless he calls me first or something.”  
  
“Okay!” With that, Pyro fled back to where Dinnerbone was hiding in the living room.  
  
\-----  
  
BTC contemplated the flyer very very carefully.  
  
He was _entirely_ sure he shouldn’t volunteer for it. He was about 95 percent certain the…’kid’ was here at the kid’s uncle’s place and as such, he had better by god stay away from volunteering to over watch any protests about Northern Ireland. It was just…it seemed a good way to get some really bad karma going if he went.   
  
He could, however, ask a friend who was already planning on volunteering to let him know what happened though, of course. And let his lieutenant know he had done that. He reaaaaaally didn’t want to surprise his lieutenant with something like that.  
  
And he could go ask his lieutenant if that was why he was watching him so closely. Not to _do_ anything with the info, but so he could stay well clear of it. The therapist had even said that it was probably a good idea for him to know in advanced those kinds of things so he could stay the hell out of any situation he could _actually_ avoid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes, Translations, etc
> 
> 1 Madame Defarge is from the Charles Dicken’s book A Tale of Two Cities, and she knits. What she knits is the names of the enemies of the Revolution. There is no way you can make her ‘unknit’ your name once she has knit it.


	10. Chapter Ten

Tom contemplated the flyer he had been given on base. He was sitting in the laundry room of the house right now, having gotten off duty two hours earlier, and was now waiting for his first load of laundry to finish up.  
  
There was a mildly suspicious feeling that his wife and son were planning on going to this demonstration. Particularly since the date and time were on the calendar. (Maybe they wanted to have Paul’s birthday party early?) He was a bit leery on asking them, however. But…better to ask and be wrong than to not ask and worry the entire time. Also, that way would make it easier on if he wanted to volunteer or not.  
  
He called out “Hey, Lasairfhíona, are you still in the kitchen?” He thought he could just barely hear the sound of her clicking knitting needles over the sound of the dryer.  
  
“Hmmmm, yes Tom.” He heard the hobbling sound of his wife making her way towards the laundry room. “Did you need something?” She waved a knitting needle towards him in question.  
  
“I had a question actually. There’s a demonstration coming up on Sunday, in Manchester…” He looked down at the flyer again.  
  
“Yea. I know.” She nodded sagely, having already seen a printout, and thus, not as concerned about the flyer he was holding, since it was likely the same thing.  
  
“Oh. Were…were you planning on attending it, then?” Probably she was. If she knew about it, she would go, in his experience, unless there was a damned good reason for her not to. Like being ill. But she was only ‘mildly’ ill right now, as she would say.  
  
“I might be, why?” She probably didn’t mean to sound so antagonistic, he thought. Or hoped.  
  
“Because they want volunteers to ah, back up the police and keep an eye on things…” Or to try to make it turn violent, he thought gloomily.   
  
“For the love of god, Tom. Don’t volunteer for that.” She stabbed at the air in annoyance with the knitting needle. By the look of her, she wanted to be stabbing the flyer and not the air.  
  
“So you _are_ going, then?” He had thought so.  
  
“Yes, I was planning on going.” So was Pól, but surely her husband could figure that out on his own.  
  
“Do you have anyone going with you? I mean, I mean, you’re on a walker and braces and….and….I worry.”  
  
“Yes. Don’t worry, I have it planned out.” Or he could not. Or maybe he assumed that their son was still too young for that kind of thing.  
  
“Okay then, I just…I worry about you.” She shouldn’t be surprised. She should not be surprised. She was surprised.  
  
“Yea, which is why I don’t want you volunteering for this. That would be waaaay bad conflict of interest there, honey.” Real bad conflict of interest, like, get thrown out of the army level bad. That was laughable. He was married to _her_ and hadn’t gotten kicked out.  
  
“You’re right, of course. If something happened to you…” He made a short pained gesture with the flyer.  
  
”Nó do mhac1…” she mumbled quietly in addition to what he had said.  
  
“What was that, Lasairfhíona?”  
  
“Nothing.” If he couldn’t figure it out, then maybe that was for the best. He could go re-read the damned calendar, it had _both_ their names on it for that day, after all.  
  
“Uh…huh. If anything were to happen to you, as I said, I’d probably panic, so….discretion.” He thought he knew what she had said, but his Irish skills were...not...where he wanted them to be yet.  
  
“I’ve never seen you panic…”  
  
“Well. Apparently I tend to get more…focused…when panicked. And only when it’s safer do I actually…break down.” Break down might be an understatement. Paralyzed would be another term.  
  
“Oh?” He had never told her about that.  
  
“Yeah. Rather severe panic when you were interned when Paul was twelve. That was….bad. I tried to punch the lieutenant at the time.” Tried nothing. Landed a punch before the lieutenant restrained him. Lieutenant took over of finding out what had happened and when he could go get his son at that point. He didn’t really remember much beyond that, the lieutenant had landed his own good hits down to keep him from fighting back more.  
  
“Oh. Pól has never actually said what happened then…I mean, I have some idea, but still.” He would mumble about things as he had clung to her when she had gotten released, but it was nigh incomprehensible.   
  
“You do know he was interned as well, pretty much?”  
  
“Yea, but not for how long or what happened.” More than a few days, less than a month, that’s all she knew.  
  
“Roughly a week. You were taken on that Tuesday, and things filtered down slowly on what happened and what I could do, so it was the next Wednesday (not the next day, the next week) before I was allowed to go get him.”  
  
“Ah shit, Tom.” She knew it had been more than a day or two. She had actually stalked down people she knew had been held at the same place at the same time, but they were…not very talkative themselves. All they were willing to share was that they had tried to protect her son.  
  
“He didn’t um, he didn’t talk to me. He refused to talk at all. I had to force him to eat when we got in.” Well, forced in the sense of sitting him down and handing him food and watching him until he ate, but still. He winced at the thought of someone _actually_ forcing his son to eat. Or to take food, to be more precise.  
  
“Wait. You were on duty then…” Pól, she knew, hadn’t seen him in uniform before then…She didn’t want to think about the ‘forced to eat’ comment. She’d experienced that before and prayed he didn’t actually mean it that way. He could not have possibly done that, he must have just death-glared their son until he ate some of the food, of course. Of course. Clearly.  
  
“Yea, I think it scared him to see me in uniform at that point. And looking um….apparently…focused or, you know, for a twelve year old, scary.” Paul wouldn’t look at him. He looked at his hands during the trip back to the house. As far as he knew, he didn’t even move after he ate and Tom had lead him to his room while he had to run back to base to finish his shift.  
  
“Or the fact that he might not have recognized you at first, you know. You’d have looked like every other soldier…” Or, nothing at all like his father.   
  
“Ah. Yes. I hadn’t thought of that, really.” He winced at that realization. Of course he’d have been scared, he probably thought he was being taken to an army base. “He…thought he was being taken to a base, didn’t he.”  
  
“I don’t know, but probably so. I got very little news. It wasn’t until you came to see me that I knew what happened to him at all.” There was one guard who had told her that they had lodged complaints in about her son being taken as well. She didn’t believe him, but hell, anything was possible, she supposed.  
  
“Oh god, I’m sorry. I thought you would have been told where he was.” How exactly she would have been told, he wasn’t sure, but god, people weren’t that much of assholes, right, to withhold information from her about her son…yes. Yes they probably were. God damn everything.  
  
“I knew where he was when we were separated, I didn’t know what happened after that.” She knew that they were unlikely to move him because of his age, at the very least. And that he was probably fearing his fifteenth birthday to some extent, because of it. He’d be almost old enough to be interned _intentionally_ now. Oh god.  
  
“I am very sorry.”  
  
“We can’t really change the past.” She made a small calming gesture with the knitting needle.  
“I know, but we might be able to work through it, at the very least.” He was trying to remember what the therapist had said about the topic.  
  
“I don’t think he’d want to talk about it very much.” Probably not at all…she was almost certain that she heard a coughing sound, but the dryer was damned loud.  
  
“You might be surprised.” They both jerked around to see Pyro leaning on the door way to the laundry room.  
  
“…Pól…how long have you been standing there?”  
  
“Only since you said that you knew where I was when we were separated.” He shrugged slightly, but was clearly not very happy.  
  
“I…” Well, at least he wasn’t standing there the entire time.  
  
“In so much that I mean that I’ve talked to Dinnerbone, ah, Nathan, about it.” He wasn’t sure they remembered his cousin’s nickname.  
  
“Oh, uh…” She wondered for a brief moment where the hell his cousin had gotten the nickname before refocusing on the task at hand.  
  
“There was….something that caused me to think about it. I might have caused Dinnerbone and Uncle Baj…and Millbee, for that matter…to be kind of…worried about me.” In that they threatened to call an ambulance, yes, but he might be able to retain some dignity if he didn’t mention it. He could always mention it later and pray they wouldn’t make a big fuss about it. He would never be that lucky, he knew, but hope springs eternal…   
  
“When you were here before, you mean?” Well, he couldn’t mean much else.  
  
“Yes, otherwise he’d have called you. He wants to talk to you about a birthday party for me, by the way.”  
  
“Don’t try to avoid the topic.” She didn’t think he really was, but, strike while the iron is hot, and all. She could call Baj tonight after dinner. That could wait.  
  
“It was an aside. I wasn’t going to avoid the topic, even though it honestly hurts like god damn hell to think about.”  
  
“I am very sorry.” Tom looked mildly stricken.  
  
“It wasn’t really your fault. You scared the hell out of me when you took me home, but I don’t think you were entirely mad at me…right?” Lasairfhíona winced at that, she had been right in one that her husband had scared their son when he had gone and rescued him.  
  
“No. I wasn’t mad at you at all. I was mad you had been taken and that it took a week for them to let me go get you.”  
  
“Ah. I was worried you were mad at me, that you thought it was my fault.” He wrung his hands in consternation of having to talk about the incident. Would his father get angry at him about it now?  
  
“Oh god no.” Tom shook his head violently at the entire thought. No, no, he was afraid for his son, not angry at him!  
  
“Mummy.”  
  
“What?” She wasn’t sure she wanted to her what he might ask right now.  
  
“How do people not go crazy there? I mean, I don’t think I’m…entirely…crazy…but…”  
  
“Well. Some do. Stubbornness gets you very far, however. And you’re not crazy.” She was now entirely certain they really needed to sit down and talk about exactly what had happened then. Well, both when he was twelve and also what had happened last year, as well, even though they were different incidents.  
  
“The therapist agrees with you, so I’m probably not crazy, that is true. Just uh, something about post-traumatic stress disorder or something?” The therapist had said it very very quickly, it was kind of hard to understand what she had said.  
  
“Yeaaaaaaah, that seems very very likely. PTSD.”  
  
“Oh. I never heard it actually spelled all the way out before.” The therapist had given him paperwork about it, but he hadn’t actually gotten the gumption up yet to read it. Scary stuff, that paperwork is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes, Translations, etc
> 
> 1 “Or your son...”


	11. Chapter Eleven

They had all decided that it was slightly uncomfortable enough talking about the past that adjourning to the living room had seemed to be a most spectacular idea.  
  
Pyro settled down on the couch, thinking at once of the last time he had curled up on a couch and talked about the past. He winced at the thought and shoved it aside, waiting for his mother and father to get settled into the loveseat across from him. Looking at her get comfortable, he knew where he got his propensity to curl up into furniture from.  
  
“Pól, mo leanbh1, I think we ought to talk about things that none of us want to talk about.” Maybe he’d agree to answer questions if they would answer his questions in return?  
  
“Perhaps we could say, um.” He chewed on his lip working out what he wanted to say and what he wanted as a result. He tried to flatten out his hair as a soothing gesture, even though it never really stayed smooth. Maybe it was the point, he could just keep flatten it again and again and it would always be there.  
  
“What?” Tom tilted his head slightly and listened to what his son had to say.  
  
“Perhaps if I tell you some things, you’ll answer some things for me as well?” Tit for tat, as it were, he supposed. He might finally get answers to some of his questions. For the first time in a while, he looked mildly pleased at the thought of talking. Answers, at least, might be forthcoming.  
  
“That…that would be agreeable to me, what about you, Tom?” Both of them had things they couldn’t really talk about, but at least they’d all know where the lines were in that case.  
  
“I…I guess so. There is some stuff I can’t actually talk about, you know…” Or that he shouldn’t talk about, maybe.  
  
”Not that it ever really stopped you when we met, honey.” She mumbled quietly under her breath at him, thinking about how they had met and what he had talked about then. A brief moment of wonder on whether or not her comrades had actually acted on the information, before she squinted as he mumbled back at her.  
  
”I can hear you just fine.” He hissed at her, annoyed. He’d been badgered enough about that in the past!  
  
”I know.” Of course he could, that’s why she had said it!  
  
“Are you whispering about me??” He squinted at his parents, mildly annoyed at their sniping at each other. At least they weren’t _really_ sniping each other, but _still_.  
  
“Oh, no, not at all Pól. Sorry.” She dipped her head in embarrassment and patted her shawl smooth.  
  
He could wager a guess on what they were talking about, but it was still really rather rude of them.  
  
“Right. So. When I was twelve. Right. Oh lord. Just, what do you want to know?” He didn’t want to ramble on, but he also wasn’t sure just how much they wanted to hear him whine on about the past.  
  
“Your therapist did tell you that talking about _would_ help, you know.” She was seeing the same therapist and they had a joint session as well. Well, they had had one joint session thus far, but still.  
  
“I know. Doesn’t make it any more pleasant, though.” He grumbled under his breath about the injustice of it all.  
  
“Of course not. Ah, shall we ask questions maybe and you can answer and ask ones in return, maybe?” Make it easier on everyone involved. Tom nodded in agreement at her.  
  
“That could work. Ah-hum, ask one then?” He dipped his head at them, encouraging them without actually wanting to say as much.  
  
“Right. You were there from Tuesday to the following Wednesday, right?” She wrung her hands, wanting to start off on something they all knew.  
  
“Yup. When did you hear about us getting taken away, Da?” He had been wondering about that for a long time. Just how long had they kept him in the dark?  
  
“On that Friday. They wanted to wait until Monday, but the lieutenant at the time insisted I be told even though I couldn’t even start on getting to you until that Monday. Then I tried to punch him and he proceeded to take over for me that Monday, instead. Honestly for the best, it probably would have taken me longer given how angry I was about it.” The lieutenant had to step in and keep him from being court-martialed for the attempted punching. He had spent the weekend locked up himself, regardless.   
  
“Pól…were you put in general population?” With the prisoners, she meant. She didn’t know how they were separated out or even if they were. That prison, while small, was large enough for that, in any case. And she bloody well hoped that they had been separated out.  
  
“What? Oh, um, with the prisoners there? No. There was a subset of those who were interned already or who had just been brought in for internment. The actual um, the prisoners, the criminals, I mean, were in a different wing. We did see them across the yard bit, but they kind of um, left us the hell alone.” He chewed on his lip thinking about what he wanted to ask in return. “So. Uh. Were you actually on duty? I mean, um. How to word this. Was I released, or did you take me under the assumption you’d transfer me?”  
  
“I…am not sure what exactly you are trying to ask, Paul.” A look of confusion passed over his face.  
  
“Okay. Let me see how to explain it better. Um. Did they release me and you pick me up, or was I handed over to the military?” Did anyone process his bloody release papers, is what he meant, but he didn’t want to just flat out ask if his father had stolen him back or not.  
  
“Oh. I think I understand what you’re asking. You were handed over to the military, ie, me, and the military, sometime during the drive back to the house, processed the release papers for you. By the time we got home, I was no longer ‘escorting’ you and was just taking you back home. I had the papers already, they just went into effect during the drive when the lieutenant stamped them, basically.” He had gone and taken pictures of the release papers once he got back on base to make damned sure they couldn’t just ‘mysteriously’ disappear in the future.  
  
“Oh. Okay.” That more or less answered his question or would at least have to do for now.  
“Why do you ask?” He suspected the reason why his son would ask such a question.  
  
“I was um, I was kinda worried that um, I hadn’t actually been, um released and that you had kinda, um, stolen me back.” If he wasn’t understanding the question, then he might as well be as direct as he could be. At least they didn’t get all passive-aggressive when he did that unlike some parents he had met of classmates.  
  
“Oh. No, the lieutenant did things properly…though he still deserved to be punched. They wouldn’t have handed you over if I didn’t have the papers, though I probably could have scared them into it, it went easier with the paperwork all done.” He’d heard of that done before, but he wanted it to be on the up and up. And not have to second guess if his son might get interned again, as well.  
  
Lasairfhíona nodded slightly, gathering her thoughts. “Were you searched?” She knew, logically, that he had to have been, but she didn’t like it one bit.  
  
“Yes, um, three times total? One when they brought us there, one on that Friday, and then on that Wednesday when they released me. It was thoroughly unpleasant.” He hissed at the memory of it. “Oh. Um. Why did you send your old colleague to watch me when I was here last month?”  
  
“Because I couldn’t watch you myself and your father and uncle are terrible at making regular phone calls.” They could come back to this damned topic later. She did want to know why her son seemed to so dislike the man. He was off-putting, but she wasn’t sure what part of him was so off-putting to her son and she was curious to know.  
  
“We called you as often as we could.” Well, _he_ had, most certainly. Now his brother on the other hand…  
  
“As often as you could. Your brother could have certainly called more often.”  
  
“I will grant you that much. We can ask him about that later.” Or walk over there tomorrow to find out what had happened when their son was here. Maybe uh, have another horrifying discussion. He loathed talking. The counselor said it was good. Well then.  
  
“Er, some of that might honestly be because he was a bit overwhelmed, but I dunno, honestly.” He wasn’t sure why he was defending his uncle not calling his da.  
  
“Regardless. Did they hurt you?” Right. Get to the point, get to the point and we can work through this faster.  
  
“At the prison?”  
  
“Yes, we’re not talking about the protest. Not yet, at least.”  
  
“Then that really kind of depends on what you mean by hurting me.” He didn’t want to dodge the question, but well, it really did depend.  
  
“Ah, lord, Paul. Right. Did the guards kick or punch you?”  
  
“No. They grabbed me and picked me up off the ground. Since they could do that really easily, I guess that they didn’t feel that kicking or punching was really required.” He shrugged slightly. That was the least of the issues he had had.  
  
“Hell. Do you have scars from then, Paul?” He wasn’t getting the information he needed, time to be as clear as he could possibly be.  
  
“Oh. Faint ones.” He rubbed his forehead slightly and winced. “They swung us into the cells, I kept hitting my forehead and my back or back of my head. Landy, um, one of the other prisoners who was with me, he was um, seventeen? He said that I was bleeding but he didn’t want to touch me cause of how young I was. He handed me one of the clothes and told me to put it on my back and lay down on it to make it stop faster.” He had really not wanted to touch him. The guards had mocked him for it and had shoved Pyro at him a couple of times. Landy had sworn at them about how he wouldn’t touch a child and how f-ing dare they try to make him so they could use that against him as well. He had said after that, that the guards had been talking about using Pyro to frame some of the prisoners so they could move them over to general population and ‘free up’ space. The guards, in his opinion, were entirely insane.  
  
“How…’nice’ of him.” He really really didn’t like to think of his son talking to ‘proper’ internees. Well. His wife had been one. He really needed to shake that thought. The man was probably perfectly normal or as normal as an Irish republican could be in his opinion.  
  
“He was perfectly nice, albeit very creeped out that they had brought a twelve year old there.” He wasn’t sure why he was defending a man he would probably never see again.  
  
“Any other injuries, Paul?” He wanted to get back at the damned task at hand. All of them would have to sort through this in days to come, might as well keep going now!  
  
“Errr…not really? Bruises and stuff. They, um, the guards, um, they kept mumbling about how my age wouldn’t protect me, but they seemed to be trying to rile up the other prisoners…” Probably. Probably all they meant by it. Probably. He could pretend.  
  
“That’s still f…god damned horrible of them!” If she had the energy to jump up, she would have, but instead she slapped the arm of the loveseat she was sitting on.  
  
He knew perfectly well what his mother had intended to say, but didn’t want to press the point. “Yes, and so. Um. Other injuries…no. One of them slapped me when they were taking me to you and they were laughing about how I was being given to the military and how the military was worse than they were…um. Were they telling the truth?”  
  
Lasairfhíona and Tom shared a look. “Sort of. Worse physically, yes. Mentally, the military doesn’t spend much time trying to um, trying to mess with your head.” Well, he’d use a different word, but mess would work well enough. And it was _mostly_ true. They didn’t try to fuck with your head, they either killed you or handed you over to other people for their ‘fun’ but rarely partook in it themselves anymore. He knew they used to but was never sure when the culture had shifted, he was just thankful it had. “Um, I hate to say it Paul, but they probably did mean to harm you later, but either they didn’t think they could get away with it or their boss was running interference with them, knowing that the military was looking for you.”  
  
“You…oh you were, yes.” Right, he had just said that it had been processed through quite properly.  
  
“It would have been clear at that point most likely, if it was after Friday.”  
  
“They said that when they were processing us, um, searching us on that Friday, yes.”  
  
“So they had probably just heard that and were pissed off that you were going to be taken from them and that the rest of the internees were not.” Made more work for them, basically and would have upset them. Not that it made it right, of course, but he couldn’t go back and punch them, either.  
  
“Right. Mother. Can you um, um, um, not ask that colleague to watch over me?” He’d been wanting to ask that since the first time he had met the man, really. He was just so….un-nerving.  
  
“Certainly, but um, why? Has he done anything?” She bloody well hoped not, but the man was…not entirely stable. Pot calling the kettle black, she thought grimly.  
  
“Not really. He’s just really un-nerving. I think he might have a death wish or something.” He wasn’t sure that was a real thing, but that’s certainly the air the man put off, that he was terribly unconcerned about him dying. He did at least seem concerned enough to keep _Pyro_ alive, just…not himself. Which was honestly baffling.  
  
“Erm.” She stared blankly ahead as she gathered her thoughts.  
  
“…Honey?” Tom looked at her when she didn’t answer and instead stared off into space.  
  
“Pól, I’d say you’re a bit young, however.” She sighed softly. “Yes, yes he does. He’s asked before that if we look like we’re going to get a peace that I’d like, that if I would, please, remove him.”  
  
“What. What the _hell_.” Pyro looked faintly ill at the thought. He _knew_ that his mother must, of course, *know* how to eliminate people, but that was the last possible thing he ever wanted to think about. Well. No. The last thing he wanted to think about was how his parents had created him.  
  
“Because he trusts me. He takes a bit too much risk. That’s why I stopped working with him long before I stopped um.” They were getting in territory that she didn’t really want to elaborate on. She didn’t think Tom would want to know, either.  
  
“Uhuh.” She was going to pull the ‘I’m just a politician now, of course and nothing else’ card on him, he just _knew_ it.  
  
“I’m a politician now, honey.”  
  
And he was right!  
  
“Yes. And _you_ are the war council, as well.” Well, that was the bloody rumor, in any case. His colleagues thought it was _hilarious_ , this thought that he was married to some IRA bigshot of sorts. He personally was highly unamused by it… _and doubted it was true._ He probably would have been actually shot, not just threatened, then…Though it was possible, of course, that she was the first in her family to become that important or high ranking…  
  
She laughed out loud at that, and almost doubled over. “Oh hell no. I’ve never met them. They want me to stay ‘clean’.” Relatively. Clean _enough_.  
  
“Not _now_ maybe, but surely before…” Before they had met, he meant.   
  
“No. I mean sure, I could have met people on the war council, but not, you know, officially. While I was high enough, by the time I could have, I was well, pregnant, and I was asked, via normal enough channels, if I wanted, perhaps, to start into politics. I agreed, and they said that they wanted me to stay the hell away from anything uh…’upper level’ and terribly sorry about lack of advancement now, but you can certainly advance as a politician and we’re really glad to have a politician that has college experience in it even, and they’d keep me in the loop, but through normal channels, etc etc etc. I finally told them to shut up and start training me on how to be a proper politician.” She had almost punched that messenger for being a babbling idiot.   
  
“How’d you take that?” While they were supposed to be asking and answering things with their son, they had gotten slightly sidetracked now.  
  
“I told him to shut up, as I said. The messenger was babbling and annoying.”  
  
“OKAY THEN. Anything else you wanted to talk about???” He knew they must have more questions, but lord, just let us continue with it and get it the hell over with!  
  
“Oh. Yes. Sorry. Um.” She smiled weakly at her son, knowing that they needed to keep talking and not get so sidetracked.  
  
“Now son, about that protest…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes, Translations, etc
> 
> 1 My baby (intentionally babying him)


	12. Chapter Twelve

Lasairfhíona, Tom, and Pyro had decided they all wanted to go over to Baj’s house. In so much as that Lasairfhíona and Tom both wanted to discuss things with Baj, and that Pyro wished to talk with (or complain at) Dinnerbone. As such, they decided to all go over together in the morning.  
  
“Have a good time playing with your cousins, Paul!” Lasairfhíona smiled softly at her son as they got ready to go into the living room where Baj was waiting for them.  
  
“Thanks! Have a good time with your brother, da!” He hoped that it wouldn’t have much fall out for him, really. He knew they were all planning on talking about shit and he prayed that they wouldn’t then discover even more questions to ask of him.  
  
He hurried (he most certainly _did not_ skip) off to Dinnerbone’s room.  
  
He skipped on up the stairs to where Dinnerbone’s room was.  
  
\-----  
  
“Hello Baj.” They both said as they entered the living room and went to arrange themselves. Baj was sitting on a chair facing the couch, so they decided to go sit on the couch that he was facing.  
  
“Hello Tom, Lasairfhíona. How’re you two today?” He shrugged slightly as he leaned his back into his seat, watching as his brother and sister-in-law sat down.  
  
“Ultimately things could be better, but you know, all told, things are um, progressing.” He was pleased to be seeing his brother again after so long, it was nice to be getting to see him frequently since they had arrived.  
  
“And how about you, Lasairfhíona?”  
  
“Well, not entirely bad, I guess. Things could always be better. And yourself?”  
  
“Oh. Well, yes. It’s nice to see the two of you.” He didn’t really want to answer, since he knew they’d all be talking about stuff that he’d much rather leave in the past.  
  
She blinked at him slightly. That wasn’t an answer at all!  
  
“That wasn’t an answer at all.” She grumped at him about his lack of proper answers. Such an annoying trait, avoiding answers. One she knew well from being a politician.   
  
“I guess so. Right enough. But we need to talk about things, we can always can get back to it.”  
  
“Fair enough, or it will have to do.”  
  
\-----  
  
“Heya Dinnerbone!” He skipped on over to Dinnerbone’s bed before spinning around to look at him.  
  
“Heya Pyro. I guess your parents and my dad are all downstairs talking now? Thought I heard you all come in.”  
  
“Yup. Woe is me.” He flopped melodramatically onto the bed and yanked his head up to look at Dinnerbone, sitting at his desk, when he responded.  
  
“Pyro, you are not a Shakespearean actor. Don’t say that shit.” He waved his hand in mild annoyance. “I suppose you wanted to talk about stuff as well then, if they are?”  
  
“Yes. They asked me, yesterday, about shit that happened when I was twelve.”  
  
“Are you referring to that thing you mentioned, about being interned or whatever it was?”  
  
“Yes.” He growled slightly at the memory.  
  
“No growling. It’s un-nerving.” While his cousin was normally very bubbly and almost ah, high-strung, it was entirely unpleasant to hear him growling.  
  
“Sorry. In other news, I learned that my parents apparently don’t talk to each other _either_ so I’m not the only one out of the loop on shit.” He waved slightly, not entirely pleased with it, but not actively unhappy any more either.  
  
“I guess so indeed.” He looked back at the computer for a moment before breaking into a flurry of laughter. Oh man, that was a new thing for it to run into.  
  
“You okay there, Dinnerbone?” He craned his head up to look more directly at his cousin as he laughed himself silly.  
  
“The Minecraft bug tracker has run into a bug. Do you want to submit it to the bug tracker? Sure. I’m _sure_ it’ll get resolved soon.” He rolled his eyes at the bug tracker. A bug tracker that had its own bug tracker, god damn.  
  
“Oh well then. That’s uh, unfortunate of it.” He generally ignored the bug tracker. Bug tracker tracked things for him.  
  
“Wait, now, back to your parents and you and yesterday or whatever it was that you wanted to talk about.” Back on track. Tracker can get them back on track.  
  
“Okay, okay. So yeah, they were asking about the time I was interned. They seemed really upset about it. I learned how mamaí became a politician. I learned that da thought that mamaí was on the war council…” Did his cousin know what that even was?  
  
“What the fuck is the war council, Pyro?” Apparently, no no he did not know what that was. He didn’t even know how to explain what it was!  
  
“Urm, the IRA war council. Thingy. Council for the IRA, in this case.”  
  
“Isn’t the IRA _at_ war? Isn’t the entire thing a war council?” Well, that made sense to him, at least, if he thought about it.  
  
“N…no? They got like, community project leaders and shit. I don’t know, they don’t talk about it! I just know that people say that Sinn Fein and the IRA war council are related, but they aren’t really, they got proper channels and shit they have to communicate through. Specifically to keep the politicians and the IRA people separate or more separate or as separate as they can be, I guess. I’d have to ask mummy more about it, really.”  
  
“Since I’m sure they’ll want to talk to you more, I guess you could do so then.”  
  
“True enough. Oh. Look, I’m like 90 percent certain that that really annoying soldier is still in the area…”  
  
Dinnerbone sucked on his teeth thoughtfully before answering. “Actually, Pyro, I’m pretty sure that we both know said soldier on the server…” Since the man was still trying to annoyingly contact both of them.  
  
“I am trying to pretend that you are not most likely true.” He knew it was true. It was almost undoubtable true that Bitsy and this damned solider, BTC, are the same person. “I am just pretending that Bitsy and BTC are not the same person until irrefutable proof happens.”  
  
“As you wish, but, I am pretty sure I’m right.”  
  
“I know.” He sighed and stared at the ceiling for a while before starting up his mp3 player.  
  
\-----  
  
“So. My son mentioned something about having had a minor uh, mental break down while he was here?” Well, that was the best description that he could come up with, really.  
  
“You could…say that. I think he was having some kind of flashback more likely, or some type of PTSD. He was…unresponsive, we thought we might have to call for an ambulance. I think that might be what broke him out of it, actually.” Well, that and the knocking on the door and calling out to him. He still wasn’t sure what the hell he was supposed to do for someone in that case.  
  
“Do you know what it was about?” Did he talk to him about it, really. He wasn’t sure if he wanted his son to have confided in his uncle before he confided in him or his mother.  
  
“Not really. Nathan, your younger nephew, his nickname is Dinnerbone, I know they talked and Nathan said later it was about something that happened when Paul was twelve but was actually triggered um, but remembering something that had happened last year? He mentioned something about running into a soldier that had been involved with whatever happened last year and that somehow resulted in him freaking out about that and about what had happened when he was twelve, I guess.”  
  
“Baj…what did he do?” He could guess. He knew what Paul had done for those months after he had brought him home and before Lasairfhíona had been released. He had alternated between showering _constantly_ and refusing to shower at all.  
  
“He locked himself into the guest bathroom shower and cranked it way up. He um, you are aware of the scars on his arms and legs, right?”  
  
“He doesn’t talk about them much…” He didn’t think his son cut himself, however. Or at least, not as far as he was aware.  
  
“They come from him scratching at himself, honey.” She had gotten for him gloves and it made her feel helpless because she couldn’t help him much more than that.  
  
“Yea, he told us that, that he sometimes wears socks and gloves to bed to try to prevent it.”

  
“He does it in his sleep, you mean? When he has the nightmares, I suppose.” She had gotten him the gloves for that, she thought he might try to take something to help him sleep, but she didn’t ask about that, it seemed…he could manage it himself.  
  
“Oh, yes.” When else would he be wearing gloves to bed to prevent something he could avoid while awake? Well, not avoid. He was doing it awhile awake when he was in the shower? Or not awake. Not _here_. Sort of here? Confusing.  
  
“He really doesn’t like talking about the nightmares, of course.”  
  
\-----  
  
Dinnerbone stared at Pyro for a moment.  
  
“You know, I think that those might rightly be called night terrors, not nightmares.”  
  
“And what the hell is the difference, Dinnerbone?”  
  
“You can get treatment for night terrors.” It was mostly a matter of degrees.  
  
“Oh.” Well how about that. “You can get treatment for them??”  
  
“Yes. Millbee had them when he first came to live with us. Which makes sense, but still. His therapist sent him to someone who proscribed treatment. Between that and the therapy, it seemed it help.”  
  
“Oh. I’ll…talk to my therapist about it, then.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes, Translations, etc
> 
> Not many notes. The bug tracker was from a tweet from...a while ago now, which I thought was funny.


	13. Chapter Thirteen

BTC sucked on his teeth thoughtfully. He no longer had a choice to volunteer to overwatch that protest, he was required to watch it. Apparently, not enough people had volunteered, so they had started pulling names at random. He doubted it was truly random, but what can you really do about it.  
  
At this point, all he could do was suck it up and pray that nothing went wrong. Or conversely, went ‘right’ in accordance to how these things went when in the province. He didn’t think they’d open fire on _English_ civilians, though…  
  
He made a note to go complain to the counsellor about being given this assignment. There was a damned good chance it would undo some of the hard earned progress he had made. As much as he didn’t like counselling, it _did_ seem to be helping and he didn’t want to give up now.  
  
At least the other soldier he was told to stay away from would probably not be assigned to the same location.  
  
\-----  
  
“If I physically said the word **’Sigh’** here, would you be upset?”  
  
“Yes honey, yes we would be.”  
  
“The protest, right. I think we’ve been over this _a lot_ now, for crying out loud!”  
  
“That’s almost as bad as saying the word Sigh.”  
  
“I’m not sure it matters if you _say_ sigh or just actually sigh. Can we just, you know, keep talking, if we gotta talk at all?” Pyro looked slightly put out at how his parents were acting. Really now, _he_ was the teenager here, not them!  
  
“Sorry, sorry. I’m just really not sure where to start on the questions, even.”  
  
“Well, I’d like to know what your actual job on base is, for example. What do you _do_? I like to pretend you aren’t out shooting people…” He certainly looked the part when he had come to get him from the gaol…  
  
“If that was an attempt at a joke, it wasn’t funny. I’m a mechanic, I repair armoured cars and tanks.” He did _not_ appreciate his son’s sense of humour right now.  
  
“It wasn’t a joke, I have no idea what you actually do!Ah...! Oh, that’s pretty cool.” He did vaguely remember his father repairing the car before.  
  
“Thanks. Hey, uh…Paul…have you ever used a gun?” He winced at how his wife was glaring at him. He had a right to know that!  
  
“Erm…define _used_. Do you mean, have I shot a gun before? Yes, at a range. Have I used one any other time? I don’t remember ever touching one prior to grandad taking me to the range.”  
  
“Ah, honey, you did try to grab the guns I had when you were a toddler, but they were, thank god, cleared. And then one fell on you and then you cried. Which _might_ have been how Tom realized where we were. Maybe.”  
  
“Yes, cause he was crying!”  
  
Pyro waved his hand lazily at the argument. “Well, nothing happened then, really. Have you ever been assigned to one of the protests?”  
  
“No. I worked on the vehicles before they went out and after they came back. Their return was not always…stellar. The ones from the protest you were injured at were _fascinating_ , however.”  
  
“…how so?” What the hell could that even _mean_??  
  
“The damage was wildly inconsistent with the stated reports. Also, I know the state they went out in, of course, and it looked like an RUC armoured car might have rolled into or rammed one of ours. For some unknown reason. I personally suspect that the RUC car was rigged to do so.”  
  
“Erm… _why_ do you think that?” It coulda hit the army car, and that would make _a lot_ of sense, it would explain that very strange sound he had heard. But rigged??  
  
“If you hit one of ours the right way, it’ll…sound relatively like an incoming missile. But you need either a real missile or a _lot_ of force. Which you can get from another armoured car or a tank, etc.” He considered this for a moment. “That is to say, they sound nothing like a missile, but if you’re too keyed up, it’s enough to get someone to swing around or…to dive away from it, setting off a chain reaction. It’s something we’re supposed to learn about in training, how to not let it continue to chain away unpredictably. We’re supposed to get away from it, but not, you know, panic.”  
  
“Panicking tends to produce terrible results.”  
  
“Well, maybe? I mean, I panicked when the solider _caught fire_ but that ended in a less than entirely terrible manner. Ish. If you don’t count what happened recently as a part of that.”  
  
“Recently…? Oh right, he’s here, isn’t he.”  
  
“Not here. Uh, I mean, yes here. Not here in here, not that kind of here. Here. Sort of here.” NOT IN THE ROOM, BUT STILL TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT.  
  
“Pól, take a few breaths. It’s okay, you can take as long as you need to say what you want to say.”  
  
“Right, right.” Pyro took a few moments to try to center himself and relax. “Right. He’s still on the base, yes. I think so, at least. I wouldn’t go ask him if I were you, Da. But that’s not the point, um. I mean, he was bothering me, because I was...there? At the protest, I mean. And he wanted to know what I saw. And then he just wouldn’t leave it _alone_. At all.”  
  
“I know you don’t want me to help, but I could talk to his lieutenant for you if you’d like.”  
  
“I think the lieutenant has already spoken to him. I mean, he appeared, erm, the lieutenant appeared when I was walking home from school then and told me he had spoken to the solider and that the solider was going to leave me alone. Honestly, do they know that that’s almost as scary as being stalked by the soldier??”  
  
“Uuuuuuh...no? He probably thought it would make things easier for you.”  
  
“Sure, but what it mostly means is that he was _watching_ me!”  
  
“...good point, but...like...he was probably watching you as soon as the solider started to go well, off the rails trying to talk to you.”  
  
“I know that. I also know that pretending that’s not true makes me happier. Sort of. Maybe.” Actually... “You know, talking about what happened when I was twelve almost seems better.”  
  
  
“...We can discuss both.”


	14. Chapter Fourteen

One week until the Protest. One week until the first time he’d go to a protest in England. And more importantly...the first protest since the one he had gotten shot at.  
  
 ** _Stressed._**  
  
It’s not like he thought things would go bad exactly, but more like he was afraid of the potential. And even if things did go bad...he could survive it, right? Right.  
  
It wouldn’t even rank up there with the worst of his birthdays if it came to that, anway. He wasn’t even being cynical this time, really!  
  
 ** _Fifteen_**.  
  
\-----  
  
She knit. There was precious little else she could do to burn off the energy, so she knit and she knit and she knit until there was nothing left at all.  
  
Less than a week (barely, admittedly, being six days away), and they’d being going to a protest. She’d gone to them before with Pól, when he was younger...and when she was less ill.   
  
_You **Hypocrite**_. Thought badly of people who dragged their kids to such things, and she had done so herself. And would justify it in that he asked to go. He asked to go because you’d be gone. Of course he’d want to. The small part argued that she, at least, had never had him carry signs until he could make them himself and decide what they said on them.  
  
\-----  
  
BTC pondered his situation. He was being required to ‘oversee’ the protest, but he intended to stay well away from it. Perhaps...he could ask to go as a civilian, maybe? Wasn’t sure if that would be better or worse, however. Seemed....fifty fifty, really.  
  
\-----  
  
He _liked_ BTC. He really did. Honestly. But holy baby jesus god was the man ever infuriating. To be fair, it wasn’t entirely BTC’s fault. He would give him that acknowledgement, this situation was only _partly_ caused by BTC himself.  
  
So far he had managed to convince command to have BTC be in uniform for the...rally? (Protest, he supposed, was a better term) Well, he was mostly certain it would devolve into a riot. But he had BTC in uniform, at the cost of having to be in uniform himself.  
  
Now, it wasn’t like that was bad. He was just...unused to being in uniform at these things (well, recently. When he had first enlisted...ah, that was ages ago). But this put him in the best position to both...’protect’ BTC _and_ keep the optics of the protest under....some amount of...control. He really didn’t want BTC to react to something and have it look like he was trying to restrain a civilian...particularly if what happened is what he thought would happen.  
  
It was the oddest feeling. For ages now, he’d been trying to figure out what he saw or heard or learned at work that made him think something was going to happen and more importantly why and _who_ were going to be involved.  
  
Two of the people he was fairly certain of. Well, no, three. We have to include BTC in this calculation, he’s pretty much the bloody center of it! He doubted the lady would leave without the young man, but he also suspected that she’d end up hospitalized again if she did. So, he’d have to factor in her being in the hospital for at least a day after the protest (depending, of course, on how bad things went, but he was _hoping_ for mild. Not non-existent, just... mild).  
  
The young man, however...he doubted the young man would fight back all that much (which was upsetting, somehow). However, that gave him some time to work, if the young man was...arrested wasn’t the right term, but interned wasn’t either...it’ll do. If the young man was interned, he could work with that. It would give him time to find out who did what when and why...and also give him a way to get BTC out of his hair when that part was done. Oh “Hey, BTC. I need you to go release someone back to their house. Thanks, Ta.”  
  
And then there was the minor issue of making sure things like BTC and Ledge (who the _hell_ uses that as a call name? Really? BTC was Blame the Controller (and so he was BTC’s controller right now, god, who decided that irony was a good thing...was that irony? He wasn’t sure that was the right use of the word irony anymore), but Ledge? The Legend from Derry? Also, who decided to make multi-part call signs...)  
  
Intelligence work was, for the most part, mind numbingly boring. The smaller fraction of a percent, however, was like trying to play chess with live hand grenades as pieces. And when one of those pieces is a good friend of yours?  
  
No wonder he’d been so exhausted these past few days. He couldn’t wait until the damned protest was over with, or until whatever happened was over with, whichever took longer (and he knew how he’d bet on that).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes, Translations, etc
> 
> Interned- Imprisoned without trial and/or without being accused of a crime.


	15. Chapter Fifteen

It was the day of the protest.  
  
 _ **Nervous.**_  
  
Tomorrow was the Twelfth, and then his birthday.  
  
 _ **Nervous. Not Nervous. Nervous.**_  
  
Perhaps he’d have some tea, he had to get _something_ into his system  
  
\-----  
  
He drifted, looking down on where the protesters were gathering. He’d have to go soon, change, and go back to where the other soldiers where. And where BTC was.  
  
But the protesters wouldn’t leave the rally point for about a half-hour and the march would talk longer than that. And they’d be at the site for at least two hours (or that was what was slated, anyway, though if or when things went bad, they’d kick into...overtime was a bad word for that).  
  
So he could stay here and watch. For now at least.  
  
  
The two people he had been waiting for had made it to the site. She was slower than he was expecting, but she was probably also conserving her energy. He knew he would have been, at least.  
  
He wondered if they realized they were being watched or if they only thought it was paranoia. The Lady _might_ but she was too invested in watching after the Young Man. And the Young Man was...worried about the Lady, he supposed. It had been ages since he had gotten a chance to be normal, to think like he used to. He wouldn’t be able to in a bit, might as well take that chance now.  
  
And he felt _bad_ for them when he did that. He could feel their fear, it was cold, it gnawed at him.   
  
He drifted away, staring down at the chessboard being unveiled in front of him.  
  
\-----  
  
It was terrible, he thought, to be stuck on base. His wife and son were... _not_ at home and he would be here through the 13th.   
  
They had, he knew they had, they were at the protest.   
  
There was something wrong, in the air. Everything felt _wrong_.   
  
On edge.  
  
     The whole base was on edge. Teetering.  
  
          white-hot with fear  
  
If people were brought in, he’d know it, everyone would, but he wouldn’t be able to see them. That he knew. He also knew they (he and some...people he was relatively friendly with) could block them from taking them _down_ , keep them in the upper blocks. They were..healthier. Also easier to track, harder for anyone to spirit someone away. Well, _he’d_ not see them, but others would.  
  
\-----  
  
She groaned slightly as they marched towards their destination. Pól marched alongside her, carrying a sign. She thought it said **Acht Gaeilge Anois!** 1but she was very tired and he had made it himself earlier.   
  
Almost there, not much longer. And they’d…stay an hour she thought. She was tired, and it was meant to last two hours, but. She wasn’t sure she’d last that long.  
  
And there was something _off_. Pól had noticed it too, she thought. Too many…people? On the edges, they danced around the edges of her senses, just far enough off she couldn’t clearly see them. And she didn’t think all of them were bad, but there were at least two that weren’t good and she could only see one that seemed more _concerned_ than…well…malevolent.  
  
     Not Good.  
  
She listened to what she could sense.  
  
          Extra Not Good.  
  
She could see something, started to pull them together with what she had learned from Pól these past few weeks.  
  
She wasn’t the focus.  
  
               **Not Good**  
  
She stared straight ahead, praying she was wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes, Translation, etc  
> 1 Acht Gaeilge Anois, know as “Irish Language Act *Now*”. Popular sentiment in (modern/our reality) Northern Ireland.


	16. Chapter Sixteen

He grimaced slightly as they approached the end point of the march, where they would be demonstrating. The army was already lined up alongside the police, prepared for them. He had expected nothing less, but it did sadden him a fair bit.  
  
While he was most certainly _young_ , he was still aware that he was being watched. Well, he was basically entirely sure that BTC was here...there...over there...nearby. But he wasn’t the only one watching him and that was...weird? Less than pleasant.  
  
The watcher was watching him, yes. But this watcher was also watching BTC, which meant...  
  
...  
  
Which meant that he was probably Army Intelligence.  
  
     _Shit._  
  
Then the other people watching _weren’t_ and...ah.  
  
He felt constrained. Someone else was determining the path, and the most he could do was choose to fight it or not.  
  
In the end, the choice only really came down to what would help him survive this bullshit. At least he had a therapist to talk to once it was all over?  
  
\-----  
  
**NO**  
  
Everything hurt. She felt someone dragging her backwards, towards an ambulance, but she didn’t stop screaming and flailing.  
  
She _had_ to get to her son.  
  
     Stop, stop, my _son_ , where are they...  
  
They were taking her son.  
  
     No. Can’t let them.  
  
She couldn’t let them do that, she had to get to him.  
  
Her voice was starting to give out, but she was going to keep going until she  
Everything started to turn grey.  
  
She’d find whoever made tranquilizers and punch them. Very hard. When she was awake again.  
  
          A _mac_ 1  
  
                    Ní mo mhac!2  
  
\-----  
  
It wasn’t entirely unpleasant to be this disjointed, however, he knew that he’d come crashing back down at some point and that would hurt. Probably would happen when they…got wherever they were going. Probably the army base.  
  
     Everything was crackling.  
  
The main plus side to this was that he didn’t currently _hurt_ although he damn well knew he would. He wondered if he would end up passing out from it when they got there. Hoped not. Would be more unpleasant that way.  
  
     He could hear, but faintly.  
  
He tried to take stock of his injuries. He knew that there was some kind of gas canisters, but he wasn’t sure what of his injuries came from that (he did know that that was what had knocked over mamaí) and what had come from the army blithely dragging him away.  
  
                                 It hurt to breathe.  
  
         Keep breathing. Have to.  
  
He prayed that she didn’t breath in very much of the stuff from that. He knew that one had gone off near him as well (was it the same one? He saw it bounce off mamaí and then...he wasn’t sure).  
  
From previous discussions with his older cousins, he should, at some point, get taken to see someone on the base (if that was in fact where they were going, and all signs pointed to yes) to get his injuries checked out. Like the clinic, except…worse. Well, everything was worse on an army base.  
  
        Did they follow the Hippocratic oath anymore?  
  
Was he...bleeding? No? Or was. Was bleeding. Was not now bleeding. Would bleed again?  
Something…was definitely sprained. More than one something. Being restrained was _not_ doing any wonders on that front. If he wasn’t so disjointed right now he’d be mad about it, but that would have taken too much… effort…and besides, it wouldn’t get him unrestrained if he was angry. He could be angry later.  
  
    Later. Again. Circular.  
  
\-----  
  
She stared up at the ceiling, yet again trapped in a hospital.  
  
This time being trapped was a bit more literal. She noted that she had been restrained to the bed at some point and wonder what the point of that was. She knew that Pól _must have_ been taken to the army base and there was no way in hell she’d manage to get in there, so there was no point in trying to prevent her from leaving.  
  
Finally, finally, a doctor (or was he a nurse? It didn’t matter. Someone medical) came into the room. She stared at him as he walked over to her and stood by the head of the bed.  
  
“Hello.”  
  
“Where is my _son_??” She hissed at him.  
  
He blinked in surprise at her.  
  
“I was about to tell you that he was taken to the local army base, and that we don’t know anything more about him at this time. I’m sorry.”  
  
She was _pissed_ , but it wasn’t their fault.  
  
“Fine. When the hell can I leave here, and who the _fuck_ restrained me?”  
  
“Um. You were combative when you came in. I can release you, but you need to stay overnight or things _will_ get worse.” He looked very dubious at the prospect that she would actually stay put. How _rude_.  
  
“It’s not like I can get to my son right now, so yes, get rid of the god damned restraints.”  
  
“Yes, yes.” He came over and removed the restraints from her arms and legs. “You took a good hit from one of the gas canisters and went down, we want to make sure you don’t have a head injury and that everything is healing back up nicely.”  
  
“So, basically, the earliest is tomorrow?”  
  
“Yes ma’am, I’m sorry about that.”  
  
“Unless you can make it sooner, don’t bother being sorry.” She only wanted her son back safe, she didn’t care what happened to her right now.  
  
\-----  
  
Pyro winced as he lay on his side on the bed in the cell. Theoretically, they should take him to see a doctor or nurse or _something_ at some point soon. He _hoped_. How much time had...?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes, Translations, etc
> 
> 1 Her son
> 
> 2 Not my son!


	17. Chapter Seventeen

  
He wanted to be at home. Or at the house that was here in England.  
  
But he’d take getting medical treatment for now, at least. Or he _would_ , if anyone remembered to take him down there. He was starting to get slightly concerned in that regard. He couldn’t tell how long it had been exactly, but longer than he was expecting. He was starting to shiver from the effort of not passing out. It was possible that he was simply coming down off the adrenaline as well, but that he wasn’t sure of. He was trying hard to not whimper from the pain.  
  
He blinked as someone opened the door to the cell. Oh?   
  
“Get up.” The guard jerked his hand at him and indicated where he wanted Pyro to go. Ah well, so he’d be restrained. Again. Lovely. Now that could just bugger _right_ off, but _no_ he had no say in it.  
  
He winced and rolled off the bed onto his feet, managed to not pass out, merely swaying heavily. The guard rolled his eyes at him for it. How rude.  
  
He wondered if the guard was going to elaborate on where he was being dragged to.  
  
“You’re going to medical. Don’t be a dick.” He grunted as he put the manacles back on Pyro, though thankfully he didn’t overtighten them this time. (Not that the thought occurred to him, but the guard had _heard_ him whimpering, and as much as he might try to not _care_ , the child was still just that. A child. One whimpering in pain. He hated himself greatly and squashed that impulse as he could.)  
  
Aha!  
  
Pyro simply nodded at him. He could not, in fact, talk that well at current.  
  
“I’ll take that as you understand me.”  
  
Pyro nodded at him again and wished he would shut the hell up. It was easier to pretend to not be where he was when no-one was talking to him.  
  
The guard physically repressed his desire to sigh at the situation and led Pyro down the hallway and past the doorway into the medical section. He pursed his lips at the thought of one of the other guards taking the ...the kid. The child. The kid, taking him back to the cells...and using that to mock the other prisoners. Well. Looked like he’d be waiting to hear what the doctor had to say, after all.  
  
Once they got to the room and Pyro was now sitting on the exam bed and unrestrained, the guard decided that since the nursing student was already in the room, he could bugger off and leave for the time being. The nursing student did _not_ look too pleased with that decision, but he didn’t say anything as the guard left. It wasn’t like he was a match for the student or anything...which is probably what the guard was thinking, come to think of it. (Or he was fleeing to not hear what had happened to the _child_.)  
  
“Hello, I’m Mark. The Doctor will be along shortly, I’ll be running diagnostic tests right now.” The student looked like he wanted to say something else but had decided against it once he had gotten a good look at Pyro.  
  
Pyro croaked out “I’m Pól.” And winced at the pain from doing so. Thankfully nothing went grey this time. Well, only slightly grey. He gripped the edge of the bed heavily.  
  
The nursing student spun around at that and blinked at Pyro a few times.  
  
“Don’t over exert yourself. I mean, try not to.” With that he handed Pyro a glass of what appeared to be water. “Drink it, it’ll help with your throat from the gas.” It wasn’t water, but mostly clear gatorade, to deal with the fact that he had been dehydrated. It wouldn’t really help with his throat _directly_ but in the long term it would.  
  
He stared at the glass dubiously for a moment before downing it. Blinking several times he started to cough. The nursing student did not look terribly perturbed by the suddenness of the coughing. After a few minutes it finally subsided, leaving his lungs once again aching.  
  
“I don’t think that helped.” He gasped. Very gently he rubbed his neck, hoping it and his lungs would stop hurting soon.  
  
“It’ll take a few minutes to work properly. You needed to clear your lungs before things can get working.” The nursing student waved his hand vaguely in the general direction of Pyro’s chest as if to confirm what he had said. “I need to take your vitals before the doctor gets here.  
  
Pyro sighed as the nursing student went over all the vital records he needed. He noted that the student merely noticed he was bleeding and didn’t really do anything about it. It wasn’t much blood, he supposed, it had almost stopped by now.  
  
He blinked slowly as the door once again opened and the doctor walked in. The nursing student was in a uniform under his lab coat, but she was in normal office type clothes (well, sort of like what his mother wore when she went to the local offices, he supposed), with the exception of the stethoscope around her neck. Was she a civilian, then?  
  
“Hello, I’m Doctor Greenling. I see you’ve already met Mark and…why haven’t you taken care of the bleeding yet?” She blinked at Mark over the rim of her glasses, looking very vexed. “He’s our last patient of the day, you’re wasting time now.”  
  
“I was just about to do that!” The slightly sheepish expression on his face betrayed the fact that he was _not_ about to do that.  
  
She sighed and started to get things ready to bandage Pyro. “This is going to sting.”  
  
He winced as she sprayed him down with some kind of antiseptic. Luckily for him, it appeared to have a numbing agent in it as well.  
  
“You have quite the number of bruises, your left knee and elbow are sprained, and you inhaled a good bit of gas. I would say to take it easy, but that’s not really in your control at the moment, so instead I’ll ask that you try to only use your right side and ...you might lose your voice.”  
  
“Can I talk normally?” He still felt very croaky.  
  
“Evidentially you can. Try to not over strain yourself.” She turned and stared at Mark again. “Why aren’t you bandaging his sprains?”  
  
“We don’t have any ace bandages in here. Also, he seems kind of…fuzzy? Do you think he could have a concussion?” For the first time since Pyro had met the nursing student, the student seemed genuinely worried.   
  
Dr. Greenling blinked heavily at Pyro and sent Mark out to do something, what it was Pyro had no idea of. She picked up a small pen light and was flashing it in his eyes while asking him several questions about how he felt. Maybe he really did have a concussion? He knew he had taken a hit to the head at least….once? or twice? Okay, so that was looking slightly more like a good possibility.  
  
She sighed softly. “Well, good news at least. You don’t have a concussion.”  
  
He wasn’t sure if he was happy about that or not, as that meant he’d be going back to the cell, he suspected.  
  
“You can go back to…” She pursed her lips. “They’ll take you back to the cells, I’m sorry.” She shook her head to herself while she produced ace bandages from her coat and started to wrap Pyro’s knee and elbow up with them.  
  
Pyro shrugged at her, as much as he could without it hurting. “Not your fault, I suppose.” He said, slurring only slightly.  
  
“I don’t control it, no, and I can’t keep you for long without it being questioned. Besides, I have to be over at the hospital in town in short order.”  
  
Wait. “Wait!” He croaked out, his voice almost giving out on him.  
  
“Hm?”  
  
“My mother? Do you know where she is? Is she here? She was hurt, I know she was hurt.” Can’t panic. Don’t panic. Worry about her when you can. Panic won’t do any good.  
  
“I...I don’t know. You weren’t said to have been brought in with any relatives, and everyone else who _was_ brought in thusly was noted. I can...check at the hospital in town and let her know where you are, if possible.”  
  
“Yes. Please!” He might be in pain, but his concern for his mother outweighed everything else.  
  
“And your father? Would he be here?” Perhaps _not_ or he probably would have mentioned that, unless he thought his father uninjured and thus less important to worry about?  
  
Pyro snorted. “Not exactly, ma’am. He might be at this base, but he’s certainly not in one of the cells.”  
  
She raised one eyebrow at him, as though puzzling this conundrum out. “Oh, that’s….I see. Well, if I see your mother in town, I’ll let her know what I can.”  
  
“Go raibh. Guh. Thank you.” 1 He shook his head slightly before blinking in surprise at her response.  
  
She grinned at Pyro. “Tá fáilte romhat.”2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes, Translations, etc
> 
> 1 The start of “Go raibh maith agat” or Thank you
> 
> 2 The response to the above “You’re welcome”


	18. Chapter Eighteen

BTC stared blankly at the door while he lay on the floor in the bathroom. On the plus side, he considered, was the fact that he had his own private bathroom. On the down side, he was currently curled up on his side on the floor of said bathroom.  
  
He took several deep steadying breathes, even though they had yet to help him. At least they weren’t _hurting_ him. Unlike what had happened to the protestors. His stomach flipped over at the thought of earlier today and he groaned again.  
  
  
This was generally _not_ how he thought this day was going to go. (How else could it have gone? It was doomed from the start)  
  
This, he thought bitterly, was why you don’t stay friends with people who go into intelligence work. (But friends were important? Expand your friend circle, damn it)  
  
\-----  
  
He had thought they might take him to where the other prisoners were, but he was back in the same cell as before. He was not entirely sure if this was a good or bad thing at this point. Perhaps they had just not decided what they actually wanted to do yet?  
  
His headache seemed to have subsided somewhat, as that doctor (Greenling? It felt like it had been ages since she had given him her name) had given him an energy bar to eat while they waited for the final results from some tests she had run. He was pretty sure she had drawn out the tests to make sure she could give him something to eat and drink. He was _not_ going to look a gift horse in the mouth on that, however.  
  
There was then the thought that at some point they’d (probably? maybe? he thought?) take him to shower. Would he see the others then? He knew they were still here, at the very least.  
  
How many people had they brought in? He couldn’t actively remember anymore, it was like the adrenaline had wiped it from his memory wholesale. He knew that they’d been processed...downstairs? And they had been brought up. But there were a few staircases up. At least two? And he’d gone up one. Had other people gone up this one? He didn’t remember people being brought _past_ him...no no. There were a few? They were cursing. But they didn’t stop where he was, they went much farther, far enough away that he couldn’t really hear them at all any more. To where the others where, where the other staircase went up to? He could almost visualize the building and he thought that must be the case.  
  
From memory, they should get fed first and then some time after that showers and then lights out (which were never truly _off_ but merely dimmer than now, presumably so the guards could still see).  
  
He closed his eyes and willed himself to sleep. If they wanted him awake he’d be so but for now he desperately needed some rest. He could worry about food and showers and that _fear_ when he wasn’t so exhausted.  
  
\-----  
  
She drummed on the side of the hospital bed. Waiting for a doctor to show up was always annoying and this was not different. They said that the doctor would have to sign off on her to stay over and and that this one (something green?) had insisted on seeing her _herself_. So be it. But why was it taking her so long??  
  
Finally, _Finally_ the doctor appeared in the doorway.  
  
“Hello. I’m Doctor Greenling. Sorry for the delay. As you might know, the local base has gotten quite...hectic. And. Oh hm. You’re Lasairfhíona Ó Conghaile?” She was fairly certain this was the same name that her last patient on the base had given her after having given her both right before he was to be taken back to the cells.  
  
“Lassy Connolly, yes, why?” Please don’t have bad news about Paul. Please please please.  
  
The doctor pursed her lips before continuing. “I don’t suppose you have a son called Paul Connolly?” No. No no _no_  
  
“...Yes. He’s not quite fifteen yet. _Why_??” Fear danced through her eyes and the doctor almost visibly winced.  
  
“I do not know if you were told, but he was taken to the base.” GET TO THE POINT. HOW IS MY SON?  
  
“I am aware. I thought he might have been and one of the...nurses? told me that earlier.”  
  
“Good good. He’s ah, he could be in better shape, but he’ll be okay. He was rather desperate to find out where you were. I knew that I’d have to come here later, but I wasn’t expecting you to be my own patient. That makes this much easier.”  
  
“How is he? I know he said he’d be okay, but” More. Tell me _more_!  
  
“He’s pretty banged up, pretty much like you are, but with slightly less trauma. Well, physical trauma that is…” She was _not_ qualified for that kind of treatment, however.  
  
“Hmph. Not great.” She grimaced as the doctor started poking and prodding her in her examination and waited for the other shoe to drop.  
  
“So, ah. His...father?” Oho. She was expecting this, now that she knew the doctor had spoken with Paul.  
  
Lasairfhíona smirked at the doctor, she couldn’t avoid it. “He’d be at the base, yes, but not because of the protest.”  
  
“He might have mentioned that…” Mhm, did you ask him? An idle wonder.  
  
“It has little to do with anything.” It was awkward enough, this line of questioning, much less to be asked this while you were being poked and prodded.  
  
“He would be...unable...to get your son home?” This seemed to annoy the doctor which amused her to no end. You have no right to judge our family.  
  
“He’d…” she paused to carefully consider how to word this. “He would likely have not been told, but would have guessed that Paul was likely taken and not here. If he was injured and in the hospital and so was I…”  
  
“Ah, I see. Hm.”  
  
“In any case, no, he’d be unable to. And it still doesn’t really matter.”  
  
“Other than the fact that he’s probably in better shape than either of you two?”  
  
“Beh, they’ll tell him sooner or later that I’m here. Or his brother will. They finally got around to giving me my phone back.”  
  
“...does he not answer his own?”  
  
“...he doesn’t have it when he’s working much as I assume you do not carry your personal phone with you.”  
  
“Mm, very right.”  
  
\-----  
  
Baj tried to not scream in front of his kids.  
  
Of course what that basically boiled down to was him hiding in the basement swearing to himself. At least they didn’t have to hear him, even if they could figure out what was happening.  
  
So. His brother was _probably_ on base (in so much as he knew he wasn’t next door right this moment. He could have left to go to the hospital he supposed). His sister-in-law was in the hospital in town and was due to be released tomorrow (he would go get her then, she said she didn’t want visitors since it was apt to be a short stay but he could see her if they changed their minds) and Paul…  
  
Paul was ... _somewhere_. He _suspected_ that his nephew was being held at the base. But he couldn’t confirm anything and that was _infuriating_. He’d sent a message to his brother about it (even if his sister-in-law had likely done the same already) and hoped he’d get the message soon. How do you tolerate the _waiting_???? The thought of something happening to Nathan or Max was _horrifying_ and now something _had_ happened to Paul and he couldn’t _do_ anything about it.  
  
He was not sure how long he stood there, leaning against the wall, blankly willing it to give him answers.

**Author's Note:**

> Notes, Translations, Etc
> 
> 1 My son. Mhac is pronounced as wak/wvac more or less.
> 
> 2 Mommy/Mammy/etc


End file.
